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INDIAN NOTES 
AND MONOGRAPHS 

Edited by F. W. Hodge 




A SERIES OF PUBLICA- 
TIONS RELATING TO THE 
AMERICAN ABORIGINES 



A BASKET-MAKER CAVE IN 
KANE COUNTY, UTAH 

BY 

JESSE L. NUSBAUM 

WITH NOTES ON THE ARTIFACTS BY 

A. V. KIDDER AND S. J. GUERNSEY 



NEW YORK 

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 

HEYE FOUNDATION 

1922 




Tms series of Indian Notes and Mono- 
graphs 13 devoted primarily to the publica- 
tion of the results of studies by members of 
the staff of the Museum of the American 
Indian, Heye Foundation, and is uniform 
with Hispanic Notes and " Monographs, 
published by the Hispanic Society of 
America, with which organization this 
Museum is in cordial cooperation. 

Only the first ten volumes of Indian 
Notes and Monographs are numbered. 
The unnumbered parts may readily be deter- 
mined by consulting the List of Publications 
issued as one of the scries. 



INDIAN NOTES 
AND MONOGRAPHS 

Edited by F. W, Hodge 




A SERIES OF PUBLICA- 
TIONS RELATING TO THE 
AMERICAN ABORIGINES 



A BASKET-MAKER CAVE IN 
KANE COUNTY, UTAH 

BY 

JESSE L. NUSBAUM 
'I 

WITH NOTES OX THE ARTIFACTS BY 

A. V. KIDDER AND S. J. GUERNSEY 
t I 



NEW YORK 

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 

HEYE FOUNDATION 

1922 



OCT ^ tU^^ 



QfQU 



CONTENTS 



Acknowledgments 

Part I. — Excavation \ 

Location of Cave du Pont 

Excavation of the cave 

Description of the cists and burials , 

Burials not in cists 

Summary 

Part II.— Notes on the Artifacts and on 

Foods 

Food 

Vegetal food .',*.'." 

Maize 

Squash 

Acorns 

Seeds 

Yucca-pod 

Cakes of prepared food 

Animal food 

Clothing \ 

Body clothing 

Sandals 

Ornaments 

Necklaces 

Beads 

Feather ornaments 

Cradle and accessories 

Toy cradle (?) \ 

Umbilical-pad covers (?)...*! 
Basketry 



PAGE 
11 

15 
15 
20 

25 
57 
60 

64 
66 
66 
66 
70 
70 
71 
71 
71 

■72 
72 

72 

73 

80 

80 

82 

82 

85 

85 

86 

90 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET- MAKERS 



Matting 98 

Strings and cords 102 

Objects of wood 107 

Atlatl darts 107 

Shafts 107 

Foreshafts 110 

Digging-sticks 113 

Wooden scoops 115 

Feather (?) box 117 

Objects of bone 117 

Awls 118 

Knife-like tool 119 

Scrapers 120 

Problematical bone objects 121 

Objects of mountain-sheep horn 122 

Sickle-shaped implement 122 

Wrench 123 

Objects of stone 124 

Hammerstones 125 

Grooved stone 126 

Hafted knives 126 

Dart-points 131 

Workshop refuse 131 

Flint-worker's "palm" (?) 131 

Pipes 132 

Decorated stone 137 

Paints 138 

Pseudo-pottery 138 

Snares 144 

Bird snares 144 

Net-snare 145 

"Medicine outfit" 147 

Notes 151 



INDIAN NOTES 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
Plates 

PAGE 

I. Sketch-map showing location 

of Cave du Pont 15 

II. Looking out of Cave du Pont . 18 

III. General view of cave before 

excavation 19 

IV. West end of cave before excava- 

tion._ ^ 20 

V. Beginning of excavation. Cists 
1 and 2 cleared and the 
heavy layer of debris 

exposed. 21 

VI. First exposure of the matted 

debris 22 

VII. Close view of the matted debris 

over Cist 5 23 

VIII. General view of cists after 
excavation, looking south- 
west 24 

IX. General view of cists after 

excavation, looking east .... 26 

X. Plan of Cave du Pont 28 

XL Cist 1 30 

XII. Cist 2, showing late fireplace 
built on original filling of the 

cist 31 

XIII. Cist 3 32 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



6 


'BASKET-MAKERS 




XIV. 


Cist 5 partly cleared, Burial A 
in foreground, Burial B 
behind 33 




XV. 


Cist 5, Burial A as found 34 




XVI. 


Cist 5, Burial A with basket 
removed from head 35 




XVII. 


Cist 5, Burial B, showing slab 
top-covering of the grave. 
Burial A (cleared) at the 




^ 


left 36 




XVIII. 


Cist 5, Burial B, slabs, removed 
to show log supports 37 




XIX. 


Cist 5, Burial B, body exposed, 
basket removed from head. . 38 




XX. 


Cist 5 after removal of bodies 
and burial enclosures 39 




XXI. 


Cist 6, showing interior parti- 
tion and stakes at joints 
between wall-slabs 40 




XXII. 


Cist 7, showing corn, and cover- 
ing of grass rolled back 41 




XXIII. 


Cist 15, showing stakes and 
parts of the roofing 42 




XXIV. 


Cist 18 A within Cist 18; the 
filling of the latter has been 
onlv partiallv removed 43 




XXV. 


Cists 20 (left), 29 (right), and 
30 (behind) 44 




XXVI. 


Cists 23 (foreground), 22 
(behind 23), and 21 (behind 
22) 45 




XXVII. 


Cist 28 (with slab cover); 
Cists 20 (left) and 29 (right) 
i n the background .... 48 


1 




INDIAN NOTES 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



XXVIII. Roof of Cist 28 with slab cover 

in place 49 

XXIX. Roof of Cist 28 with slab cover 

removed 50 

XXX. Cist 28 with roofing removed. . 51 

XXXI. Cist 30 54 

XXXII. Burial E, the bunched bones 
covered by fragments of 

basket 55 

XXXIII. Burial F 58 

XXXIV. Cache of seed corn in yucca 

bag 68 

XXXV. Ears of corn from the cave. ... 69 

XXXVI. Pair of sandals, upper side 72 

XXXVII. Pair of sandals, soles 73 

XXXVIII. Pair of sandals with hair-string 

ties 76 

XXXIX. Sandal with bark tie-string 77 

XL. Necklace of seed beads and 

parts of another 82 

XLI. Juniper-bark roll from foot of 

cradle 83 

XLII. Toy cradle 86 

XLIII. Umbilical-pad cover and con- 
tents 87 

XLIV. Bundles of splints for coiled 

basketry 90 

XLV. Coiled basket from Burial A . . 91 

XL VI. Coiled basket from Burial B . . 92 

XL VII. Small coiled basket 93 

XL VIII. Fragments of coiled basketry. . 94 

XLIX. Bottoms of unfinished baskets. 95 

L. Mat made of whole grass plants 98 

LI. Grass and yucca-leaf matting . 99 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



BASKET- MAKERS 



LIl. Small mat of braided juniper- 
bark and string 100 

LIII. Fabric of yucca-leaves 101 

LIV. Corn-husk pad used for chink- 
ing cists 102 

LV. Hanks of yucca-fiber for string- 
making 103 

LVI. Work-bag containing assort- 
ment of strings and threads . 104 
LVII. Bundles of textile materials 

from work-bag 105 

LVIII. Agricultural implements 114 

LIX. Scoop-like objects of wood .... 115 
LX. Bone awls and scraping tool . . 120 
LXI. Wrench and sickle-shaped ob- 
ject of mountain-sheep horn 121 
LXl'I. Stone grooved by tool sharp- 
ening 128 

LXIII. X-ray photograph showing bore 

of pipe 129 

LXIV. Net-snare 146 

LXV. Re-used umbilical-pad cover 

and part of contents 147 

LXVI. ''Medicine pouch" and con- 
tents 148 



Figures 

1. Diagrammatic section of cave deposit . 21 

2. Diagrammatic section of Cist 9 40 

3. Diagrammatic section of Cist 28 50 

4. Diagrammatic plan and section of Cist 

30 56 

5. Feathered ornament 83 

6. Feather ornament 84 



INDIAN NOTES 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



7. Wrapped plume 84 

8. End of tie-string 89 

9. Weave of normal coiled basketry 90 

10. Diagrammatic drawing of weave 

shown in pi. xlviii, c 95 

11. Diagrammatic drawing of single-rod 

weave 95 

12. Diagrammatic drawdng of weave of 

sifter basket 97 

13. Diagrams of plain and tied twining in 

mat-making 98 

14. Normal selvage of matting. .'.'....' .' . . ' 100 

15. Diagram of selvage of small mat 101 

16. Tip-end of dart, showing socket for 

reception of foreshaft 108 

17. Feather with butt plugged 110 

18. Foreshafts for atlatl darts Ill 

19. Bunt foreshaft (?) 112 

20. Feather (?) box .";;;; 116 

21. Knife-like bone tool 119 

22. Bone object of unknown use 121 

23. Hafted knife 127 

24. Blunt hafted implement .*.'.'.'.'.' 129 

25. Haft for stone knife ] 130 

26. Pipe of banded slate , \,\ 133 

27. End view of fig. 26 133 

28. Pipe of banded slate. ... . .. . . 134 

29. End view of fig. 28 ',\\\ 134 

30. Section of pipe to show successive 

drillmgs of the bore 136 

31. Decorated stone I37 

32. Fragment of unfired clay vessel .* 139 

33. Fragment of unfired clay vessel 139 

34. Fragment of unfired clay vessel 141 

35. Probable use of net-snare 146 

36. Bone object from "medicine pouch". . , 149 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



THE discovery and exploration of 
the Basket-maker cave described 
in this paper is due to the gener- 
osity of General T. Coleman 
du Pont, by whose assistance the Museum 
of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 
was enabled to send an expedition into the 
country of the Kaibab Paiute in the autumn 
of 1920. This expedition, under the leader- 
ship of Mr. Jesse L. Nusbaum, then a mem- 
ber of the Museum staff, had the two-fold 
object of collecting ethnological material 
from the surviving Paiute Indians in south- 
western Utah and eastward, and of investi- 
gating such archeological sites as might 
be discovered during the reconnoissance. 
Mr. Nusbaum was fortunate enough to 
locate a cave eight miles northwest of 
the town of Kanab, in Kane county, Utah, 
that had previously been disturbed only to 
a very slight extent. The evidences of 



11 



INDIAN NOTES 



12 


BASKET- ]\I A KERS 




archeological remains here were so promis- 
ing that he undertook and carried to com- 
pletion the excavations whose results are 
herein recorded, and which proved to be 
of considerable importance in shedding 
additional light on the culture of the so- 
called Basket-makers. In recognition of 
the interest that General du Pont has taken 
in this work, the cave was named after him, 
and is now known locally as Cave du Pont. 
The thanks of the Museum are due also to 
General du Pont for making possible the 
present publication. 

Dr. A. V. Kidder, of the Department of 
Archeology of Phillips Academy, Andover, 
Mass., and Mr. S. J. Guernsey, of the Pea- 
body Museum of Harvard University, 
have devoted special attention to archeo- 
logical problems in southern Utah and 
Colorado, and of northern Arizona, for 
several years, and it was therefore highly 
gratifying to the Museum of the American 
Indian, Heye Foundation, that Dr. Kidder 
and Mr. Guernsey accepted the task of pre- 
paring that part of the memoir which per- 
tains to the artifacts recovered during the 




INDIAN NOTES 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



13 



course of the excavations. Appreciation of 
the contribution by these gentlemen, which 
adds materially to the value of the results, 
is hereby acknowledged. The photographs 
of the remains observed in the field are by 
Mr. Nusbaum, while those of the artifacts 
were made by Mr. E. F. Cofhn of this 
Museum. 

The thanks of the Museum are expressed 
also to Mr. Wilford Robinson, owner of 
Cave du Pont; to Dr. G. N. Collins, of the 
Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, for his study of and 
report on the maize found; and to Mr. Paul 
C. Standley, of the U. S. National Her- 
barium, for the identification of certain 
seeds. 

George G. Heye, 

Director. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



A BASKET-MAKER CAVE IN 
KANE COUNTY, UTAH 

PART I— EXCAVATION 

By Jesse L. Nusbaum 

LOCATION OF CAVE DU PONT 



DURING the summer of 1919 the 
writer made a trip through parts 
of southern Utah for the purpose 
of collecting enthnological speci- 
mens from the Ute and Paiute tribes. In 
the course of this journey information was 
received from Mormon farmers and cattle- 
men of Kane county to the effect that in 
the caiions of that district there were caves 
containing numerous signs of aboriginal 
occupancy. In the autumn of 1920 an 
expedition was undertaken to investigate 
these sites. 



15 



INDIAN NOTES 



16 


BASKET-MAKERS 




Kanab (see sketch-map, pi. i), the county 
seat of Kane county, was reached after a 
trip of 140 miles by automobile stage 
from Marysvale, the terminus of a branch 
line of the Denver and Rio Grande Rail- 
road. With Kanab as a base the country 
was explored on horseback, and a promising 
cave was located 8 miles northwest in 
Cave Lake canon. The route from Kanab 
to the cave follows up Kanab creek for 5 
miles along the Kanab-Mount Carmel 
mail-road, thence for 3 miles up Three 
Lakes cafion to its junction with Cave 
Lake cafion. Another mile up the barren 
lower reaches of the latter brings one to 
the "Meadows," a fertile widening of the 
valley in which Mormon pioneers, attracted 
by abundant water and fme natural pastur- 
age, settled more than forty years ago. 

Cave Lake cafion derives its name from 
two grottoes in its walls, both of which 
contain springs copious enough to spread 
out and form considerable pools under their 
overhanging roofs. The larger cave is 100 
feet wide at the mouth and extends back 
about 300 feet into the red sandstone cliff; 




INDIAN NOTES 



CAVE DU PONT 


17 


the "lake" is not more than 7 or 8 feet 
deep, but it furnishes a never-failing water 
supply for the fields below. Besides these 
two caves there are, in the sides of the 
canon at and near the "Meadows," a num- 
ber of others, some at the level of the valley 
bottom and often more or less moist; some 
high up in the cliffs and, where protected 
from rain and snow, almost absolutely dry. 
Cave du Pont is one of the latter; it was 
discovered by the children of Mr. Wilford 
Robinson, a local ranchman; later Mr. and 
Mrs. Robinson did some digging in it and 
found several interesting specimens which 
were purchased and now form part of the 
collection. 

The cave lies 300 yards below the Robin- 
son ranch in a bay on the east side of the 
canon. To reach it from the valley bottom 
one cHmbs 250 feet or so up a steep, rocky 
talus, heavily overgrown with scrub-oak 
and juniper. At the top of this there is a 
narrow sandstone bench, on which is a good 
seepage of water. Thirty feet above the 
bench and at the foot of the final cliff tor 
rimrock, is situated the cave, at a total 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





18 


BASKET- IVIAKERS 




of about 275 feet above the level of the 
''Meadows." In front of the cave the 
dampness that concentrates lower down to 
form the seepage on the bench is sufficient 
to support a very dense growth of oak and 
box-elder, screening the entrance effectively 
from the view of anyone in the valley below 
(pl. n). 

The cave is high and relatively shallow; 
it measures 100 feet across the mouth, 
60 feet deep from the line of shelter to the 
extreme rear, and is about 55 feet high at 
the front. The level, utilizable portion oi 
the floor does not occupy the entire interior, 
but consists of a semilunar terrace or bench 
that hugs the back wall of the cave (pl. iii). 

At first sight the place did not seem an 
attractive one for excavation; the interior 
was completely devoid of buildings, and 
the roof and walls showed not the least trace 
of smoke. The sandy surface, filled with 
slabs of stone fallen from the roof, contained 
no debris of occupancy. At the rear, how- 
ever, were a few almost obliterated picto- 
graphs, and at the west side there protruded 
the tops of a few slabs obviously set on edge 




INDIAN NOTES 



o 

m 
H m 

"5 



o m 

S- o 

? > 

o < 

^ rn 



o X 

3 o 

w > 
? < 

""^ o 

2 




CAVE DU PONT 


19 


by human agency. These indications led 
the writer to explore. He was further 
influenced in choosing this particular site 
by the fact that the specimens recovered by 
Mr. Robinson appeared to belong to the 
Basket-maker culture. This culture is a 
very early one, antedates that of the Cliff- 
dweller-Pueblo people, and is in many ways 
strikingly simple and primitive.^ Basket- 
maker remains had hitherto been found 
only in a rather restricted area in the south- 
eastern corner of Utah and the northeastern 
corner of Arizona (see mapj pi. i). Kanab 
lies 125 miles in an air-line from the nearest 
previously reported Basket-maker site 
(Marsh Pass, Arizona), and is nearly 150 
miles from the Basket-maker caves of 
Grand Gulch, Utah; furthermore the Kanab 
district is cut off from the above localities 
by the formidable barrier of the Colorado 
River canon. Thus it appeared to be of 
great importance to determine whether the 
remains in Cave du Pont actually wert 
Basket-maker or not. The excavations 
settled this question beyond a doubt, 
the finds agreeing in every particular with 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





20 


BASKET- MAKERS 




those from other Basket-maker sites, and 
we now are enabled to extend the known 
range of this interesting people to well over 
twice its former extent. Although there 
are clifif-houses in Cave Lake canon and in 
other nearby valleys,^ no trace of Cliff- 
dweller artifacts was found in Cave du 
Pont. 

EXCAVATION OF THE CAVE 

A beginning was made by constructing a 
horse-trail up the steep talus in order that 
a team and pole-scraper might be employed 
to drag out the masses of sand that obviously 
had to be removed. An arbitrary bench 
was commenced well to the front of the 
cave and extending across its entire width. 
This cut was carried forward and inward 
by hoeing and raking at its base and allow- 
ing the loose fill to run down far enough to 
be carried over the dump by the scraper 
(pi. v). The dust resulting from such a 
method of excavation made breathing very 
difficult. Respirators could not be pro- 
cured, and wet sponges tied over the nose 
gave little reUef. Frequent halts were 




INDIAN NOTES 



EXCAVATION 



21 



necessary, not only for rest and fresh air, 
but also to allow the atmosphere to clear 
sufficiently for taking pictures. Photog- 
raphy, indeed, was much hampered be- 
cause the all-pervading dust settled so 



%<^ 






m^m^fM 







Fig. 1. — Diagrammatic section of cave deposit, 
(a. Surface sand with rocks from cave roof._ h. 
Matted debris dipping more or less into cists. 
c, Cave sand undisturbed except by cists sunk 
into the upper measures.) 

thickly that everything assumed a mono- 
tone, and the most thorough brushing had 
constantly to be done. 

After two days' work in barren sand, 
the advancing face reached the front of the 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



22 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




culture stratum, a very uniform deposit 
lying across the entire width of the cave 
and extending clear to the back. From 
above downward the sequence of layers 
was as follows (see fig. 1): 

(a) One foot to 18 inches of wind-blown 
sand containing here and there masses of 
rock fallen from the roof. 

{b) A layer, 3 to 5 feet thick, of long 
grass, oak-leaves, juniper-bark, corn-husks, 
corn-stalks, corn-cobs, sticks, and yucca- 
leaves; with some pieces of twisted and 
braided yucca-fiber, and a certain amount 
of human and animal excrement. At the 
very bottom there was generally found a 
thin bed of apparently wind-blown oak- 
leaves. All this material was absolutely 
dry and perfectly preserved; it was tangled 
and matted together in a wadded mass that 
defied the shovel, and had to be pulled or 
raked out bit by bit (pi. vi, vii). It is 
noteworthy that it held no charcoal or ash 
whatsoever, almost no animal-bones, and 
not a single sherd of pottery. 

(c) Lastly, and extending to an unascer- 
tained depth, came the original soft, sandy 




INDIAN NOTES 



THE CISTS 


23 


floor of the cave. Sunk into this floor 
were a number of cist-like structures made 
of flat sandstone slabs set on edge; they 
were overlaid by and often filled with the 
matted debris. 

The cists, of which thirty-one were found, 
are all very much alike. Perhaps the best 
general idea of their structure and arrange- 
ment may be had from pi. viii and ix, 
views taken after the completion of the 
excavations, and from the plan of the cave 
(pi. X). 

It will be seen that the individual cists 
vary somewhat in size and in proportions, 
but that all tend to be round, with an 
average diameter of about 5 feet. They 
were made by digging in the sandy floor of 
the cave a hole of the desired size and then 
paving it with slabs of stone, the interstices 
between them often pointed up with adobe 
mortar. The sides or walls were constructed 
of a single course of large upright slabs, 
carefully selected for size and shape, but 
apparently unworked except for an occa- 
sional slight trimming. These wall-slabs 
were set in the sand around the edge of the 


* 


AND MONOGRAPHS 





24 



BASKET- MAKERS 



floor, leaning outward at an angle of about 
15 degrees from perpendicular. If the 
slabs could be made to fit snugly side by 
side, there was no chinking; but if, as was 
often the case, a sand-tight joint could not 
be attained by juxtaposition or by a slight 
overlapping, it was filled with mud or with 
wads of grass and cedar-bark. The care- 
ful stopping of cracks, together with the 
fact that the walls have so pronounced an 
outward flare, makes it reasonably certain 
that the structures were sunk into rather 
than built upon the ancient surface of the 
cave. The tops of the wall-slabs were un- 
doubtedly flush with or possibly a trifle 
below the level of the ground and did not 
protrude as shown in the photographs of 
the completed excavation (it was of course 
necessary for a thorough investigation to 
clear away the sand from the outsides of 
the walls). 

Some of the cists were certainly roofed. 
In other cases there is doubt, for many 
of them appear to have been roughly torn 
open, the roofs thrown aside, and the inte- 
riors emptied of whatever they may have 



INDIAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


25 


contained; whether this was done by their 
owners or by subsequent looters is uncertain. 

DESCRIPTION OF THE CISTS AND 
BURIALS 

Cist 1 lay toward the front of the cave 
on the western side. Water falling from 
the cliff above has cut a considerable gully 
which heads at this place and has washed 
away about half of the walls. Seven rough 
slabs remain, forming the rear and part of 
the sides; they indicate a squarish or 
rectangular enclosure. The construction, 
as shown in the photograph (pi. xi), is very 
poor, large unfilled spaces having been left 
between the slabs. Because the floor is 
unpaved, the original depth of the cist 
could not be ascertained; the complete 
side is 3 feet 6 inches long; one of the frag- 
mentary walls is of the same length. No 
trace of roofing was found, nor were there 
any specimens in the mass of oak-leaves and 
sand which filled the chamber. 

Cist 2 was covered to a depth of more 
than 2 feet with sand arid rocks mixed with 
oak-leaves. When this had been cleared 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





26 


BASKET-MAKERS 




away the cist proved to be irregularly dia- 
mond shaped and to measure 5 feet long. 
3 feet wide, and 2 feet 8 inches deep. 
Its walls are composed of seven large slabs 
of selected sandstone, 1 to 4 inches thick, 
one of them very much longer than the 
others (see plan, pi x; and photograph, 
pi. xn). The edges of the slabs roughly 
join or slightly overlap one another. On 
the inside the joints are filled and pointed 
up with sandy, iron-red, adobe mortar; on 
the outside they are backed with juniper- 
bark torn into long thin shreds or strips; 
and at the base of the walls on the outside 
these strips are held in place and the main 
slabs are steadied by smaller slabs. The 
floor of the cist is paved with large irregu- 
lar slabs, the interstices filled with adobe 
mortar. 

On excavating the interior it was found 
that at some time subsequent to its original 
construction a fireplace had been built in 
the cist. Two sides of this were made by 
utilizing the two original slabs of the south- 
east corner; the other two sides were made 
of small slabs set in the debris within the 




INDIAN NOTES 




^^8 9 



i^/230 




BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




GENERAL VIEW OF CISTS AFTER EXCAVATION, LOOKING 
EAST 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


27 


cist (pi. xii). The fireplace was almost 
square (2 feet by 2 feet 1 inch), was 1 foot 
2 inches deep, and contained a bed of coarse 
charcoal a foot in depth. 

Just above the firepit in the loose de- 
bris was a small piece of very heavy, tanned 
deerskin. Underneath the firepit a tangled 
mass of shredded juniper-bark was found to 
cover the whole interior of the cist; below 
this were long, wide strips of the same ma- 
terial; and below these many small slabs of 
sandstone. There was next encountered 
a series of broken oak poles, Ij to 4 inches 
in diameter and about 3 feet long. These 
were undoubtedly the supporting members 
of a crushed-in roof, which had consisted 
of: (1) poles, (2) slabs, (3) juniper-bark 
strips, (4) shredded or matted juniper-bark. 
Many corn-cobs of a small irregular type 
and one ear with kernels were found in the 
sand and debris on the paved floor. There 
were also a nicely made planting-stick of 
buck-brush or mountain mahogany, and 
a small deposit of tiny, very black seeds 
(Chenopodium sp.). 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





28 



BASKET-MAKERS 



Cist 3 is a roughly circular chamber with 
one side somewhat flattened. Its dimen- 
sions are: 5 feet 6 inches long, 5 feet wide. 
2 feet 6 inches deep. The walls are com- 
posed of 14 more or less rectangular slabs 
set, leaning slightly outward, in the sand; 
the majority of them are butted together; 
a few overlap at the joints. No chinking 
or mud was used, either in the irregularly 
paved floor or in the interstices of the walls. 
A single stout box-elder stake is set upright 
in the floor on the north side, tight against 
one of the wall slabs (to be seen at left 
of photograph, pi. xiii); it stands 3 feet 
above the floor, and near the top it is 
wrapped by a double loop of yucca-leaves 
neatly knotted. On the opposite side of the 
cist an unpeeled, forked branch of box- 
elder is set firmly in the floor; it measures 
1 foot 8 inches to the crotch and 3 feet 
4 inches to the tops of the limbs (the farther 
one of the two forked holes in pi. xin). 
The crotch shows much rubbing or wear, 
as though it had been used to support a 
cross-pole. Beside it was found a juniper 
log, also forked, 4 inches through the butt 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 








P 









PLAN 01 




DU PONT 



CISTS AND BURIALS 



29 



and 8 feet 6 inches long. It was not planted 
in the floor, but leaned against the wall as 
shown in the photograph (pL xiii). The 
first forked stick and the looped stake 
probably represent roof supports, and the 
juniper log was presumably one of the cross- 
members; the others, however, have all 
disappeared, either thrown out by prehis- 
toric looters or removed by the original 
tenants of the cave for use in some other 
structure. Nothing else was found in the 
filling except matted juniper-bark and trash 
such as covered the whole cist area. 

Cist 4 lies close to Cist 3 and is of about 
the same size and shape; it exhibits, how- 
ever, much more careful workmanship, the 
joints in the wall and between the large 
slabs of the floor being carefully filled and 
pointed up with adobe mud. A bowlder 
in situ was utilized for part of one side. 
While the debris within was of the usual 
type, very densely tangled and most diffi- 
cult to excavate, there were found scattered 
through it the following specimens: a two- 
strand necklace of polished seeds and ser- 
pentine beads (pi. xl, a) ; several sections of 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



30 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




a string of seed beads (pi. XL, b) ; a piece of 
juniper-bark matting; two large balls of red 
paint; a lump of white paint; a small bundle 
of feathers (fig. 5); a worked stick; a small 
round stone; a bit of flint; a squash stem; 
two pieces of squash rind; and eighteen 
small ears of corn. 

Cist 5 is of particular interest because 
it was put to secondary use as a burial 
chamber. It is a larger example than is 
usual in the cave, is approximately circu- 
lar, and measures 8 feet north and south, 
6 feet 8 inches east and west, and 2 feet 
9| inches deep. Above the walls lay 
3 feet of compact debris topped by 15 inches 
of wind-blown sand. When all this super- 
ficial material had been removed, and the 
sides cleared sufficiently to expose the wall- 
slabs all around, it became evident that the 
interior had been subdivided into two bin- 
like structures of slabs built against opposite 
sides of the niain cist (see pi. xiv, a photo- 
graph taken at a later stage of the clearing). 

Burial A, the first uncovered, occupied 
the better made of the two bins. In con- 
structing it the slabs of the cist-wall were 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKFR CAVE 




CIST 2, SHOWING LATE FIREPLACE BUILT ON ORIGINAL 
FILLING OF THE CIST 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


31 


utilized at one end only, the rest having 
been built of slabs set on the floor (pi. 
xv). No covering was in place, but two 
slabs large enough to have served that pur- 
pose were found on edge beside the grave; 
and three poles lay near the foot (pi. xiv). 
As the second burial in this cist was covered 
with both poles and slabs, it is possible 
that in the present case a similar protection 
was originally provided, but was pulled 
off and pushed aside by looters; the body, 
however, did not appear to have been dis- 
turbed. The burial bin was so small 
(2 feet 9 inches long, 1 foot 1| inches 
wide) that the individual, an adult, occu- 
pied an extremely cramped position, lying 
on the back, the head south and bent for- 
ward nearly at right angles to the body; 
the left hand was at the pelvis, the right 
arm extended along the side, the knees were 
drawn up and rested against the wall of 
the bin (pi. xvi). The body was placed 
directly on the original paved floor of the 
cist. Over the head was inverted a fine 
coiled basket (pi. xlv). Although the 
corpse itself was desiccated, and where the 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





32 


BASKET- MAKERS 




tissues had not been eaten by rats and in- 
sects was in fairly good preservation, such 
mortuary wrappings as may have been 
used were entirely destroyed by decay. 
The hair was brownish-black streaked with 
gray, and showed a reddish tinge in the 
sunlight. This reddish tinge, often seen 
in the hair of ancient "mummies" from the 
Southwest, is probably due to some chemi- 
cal action. 

Burial B, as was said above, occupied a 
second bin on the opposite side of the main 
cist from Burial A (pi. xiv). Directly 
below the mass of matted debris which 
overlaid the entire top of the cist, were a 
number of flat slabs lying on their sides, 
together with a piece of rush matting (pi. 
XVII, right-hand side); carefully removing 
these, grass and juniper-bark were found 
underneath, covering three juniper poles, 
5 to 7 feet long and 7 inches or so thick at 
the butts (pi. xvm, right-hand side). The 
north ends of the poles did not reach the 
wall slabs at that side of the cist, and only 
two of the south ends extended over the 
south wall. Five smaller sticks of shorter 




INDIAN NOTES 



^mm 







CISTS AND BURIALS 


33 


lengths, placed more or less at random, 
completed the timbering, under which was 
the rather crudely built bin containing the 
body (pi. xix). Its west side was formed 
of a single slab, 1 foot 10 inches long; the 
east by two slabs (11 inches, and 1 foot 
10 inches long respectively) butted together 
at a slight angle; the head of the grave was 
provided by one of the slabs of the original 
cist wall; the lower end was open. The 
dimensions of the bin were: width at feet, 
10 inches; at the middle, 1 foot 3 inches; 
total length, 3 feet 8 inches. Sand and 
debris had sifted in, covering all but the 
erect knees of the body. The individual 
was an adult. It lay on the back, the 
head 20 degrees south of east; the arms were 
folded across the abdominal region, the 
knees drawn up to the perpendicular (pi. 
xix); the head was tilted well forward as 
the result of cramping it against the end of 
the grave. Over the head was inverted a 
small coiled basket (see pi. xv, xvi, upper 
right-hand corners; the basket is illustrated 
in pi. XLVi). On the left shoulder lay a 
pair of very fine, square-toed, yucca-fiber 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





34 


BASKET- MAKERS 




sandals with elaborate human-hair tie- 
strings (pi. xxxviii) ; under the heel of these 
was part of a skin pouch. At about 5 
inches from the left elbow there had been 
placed a long, sickle-shaped implement of 
mountain-sheep horn (pi. lxi, b). Over 
the chest were two small pieces of grass 
matting, possibly part of the mortuary 
wrappings, but more probably fallen from 
among the logs which had covered the 
grave. Of other wrappings nothing was 
preserved; decay, indeed, had taken con- 
siderably greater effect upon this interment 
than was the case with Burial A, for the 
fleshy parts had almost entirely disappeared, 
and where present were completely honey- 
combed with tiny worm-holes. The liquids 
of decomposition had so permeated and 
caked the sand in the grave that a knife- 
blade pierced it with difficulty, and the 
task of clearing the body and its accompany- 
ing objects was an arduous one. Kidder 
and Guernsey (op. cit., p. 81, fig. 31) found 
Basket-maker burials apparently encased 
in prepared adobe mud. This was not the 
case in the present instance, where the 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




CIST 5, BURIAL A AS FOUND 



8ASKET-MAKER CAVE 




CIST 5. BURIAL A WITH BASKET REMOVED FROM HEAD 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


35 


caking was surely due to the decomposition 
of the body. 

When the two burials and their enclosing 
bins had been removed, the cist was cleared 
out (pi. xx). As the photograph shows, 
it is a structure of the ordinary type, the 
encircling wall and the paved floor made of 
fitted slabs, the interstices between them 
chinked and smoothed over with red mud. 
Two short stakes, one of which appears in 
pi. XX, are driven into the floor to help 
support the wall slabs. The three timbers 
that are seen leaning against the wall are 
the ones referred to above as having possibly 
been part of the pushed-aside covering of 
Burial A; it is also possible that they were 
timbers used in roofing the cist before 
it was converted into a mortuary chamber. 
In the latter case they probably extended 
clear across the cist and were reduced to 
their present length by some accidental fire 
in it, for two of them are burned at the 
ends, and a deposit of ashes and charcoal 
was found at about the position where it 
would be expected had such a fire taken 
place. Under the ashes was an empty 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





36 



BASKET- M A K E R S 



umbilical-pad cover; aside from this, a 
few ears of corn, and some loose bits 
of cordage, the rubbish in the cist was 
barren. 

Cist 6 is the largest in point of diameter 
of any structure in the cave; it measures 
8 feet 9 inches from northeast to southwest, 
and 7 feet 8 inches in the opposite direction. 
From the top of its wall-slabs to the paved 
floor the average distance is 2 feet 8 inches, 
a depth slightly exceeded by several other 
cists. Eleven slabs, several of unusually 
large size, form the walls. There is a gap 
at the northeast side (see plan, pi. x, and 
pi. xxi), probably attributable to the re- 
moval, for some reason or other, of a single 
slab, rather than to the former presence 
of an entryway at this point. Ten stakes, 
Ij to 2 inches in diameter, some reaching 
half-way up the wall, others extending its 
full height, are so driven into the floor, 
against the inside of the wall at the butted 
or lapped joints between the slabs, that they 
effectually support the whole structure and 
keep it from being caved inward by the 
pressure of the sand outside (pi. xxi). The 



I N D I A N N O T E S 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


37 


stakes are all either burned off or broken 
off at the ends; these were the only methods 
ever used, apparently, for reducing the 
length of small stakes. 

As may be seen in the plan and photo- 
graph (pi. X, xxi), the cist contains a small 
quadrant-shaped inner chamber, each side 
of which is constructed of two very irregu- 
lar slabs. In this compartment, as in most 
of the rest of the main cist, nothing was 
found except the usual matted rubbish. 
On the paving slabs at the southeast side, 
however, where the tip of an underlying 
bowlder protrudes through the floor, there 
was uncovered a skin "medicine pouch" 
(pi. Lxvi and fig. 36), about two pounds 
of yellowish-brown gummy substance, a 
fragment of yucca matting, and several 
pieces of yucca cord. These specimens 
are described in the second part of the 
report. 

Cist 7, a small hexagonal affair about 
3 feet in diameter, has five sides made of 
thin slabs; the sixth is provided by the 
largest slab used in any wall construction 
in the cave. It had evidently scaled off 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





3S 


BASKET-MAKERS 




from the roof of the cave and been set on 
edge just where it fell, for no attempt was 
made to lower it level with the rest, or to 
conform with them in height. It is 5 feet 
in length, 8 inches thick, and protrudes 2 
feet 9 inches above the unpaved sand floor 
of the cist; only 2 feet 5 inches of its length 
were used in the wall (see pi. x). 

This cist was found in its original condi- 
tion, as left by its owners. It lay beneath 
3 feet of debris and 1 foot of surface sand. 
Under this and over the top of the slab 
walls was a matted layer of grass and shred- 
ded juniper-bark, on which had been placed 
a single very large woven moccasin, three 
bundles of corn-husks (pi. liv), and a piece 
of yucca cord knotted at each end. Under 
the matted grass and juniper-bark was a 
thin layer of clean, stripped juniper-bark; 
next below a two- to six-inch bed of macer- 
ated and twisted bunch-grass. All this 
material covered and protected from sand 
the three to three and a half bushels of 
corn on the cob which were stored in the 
bottom of the cist (pi. xxii). The cobs 
had been stripped nearly bare by insects 




INDIAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


39 


and borers, but many of the partly-eaten 
kernels were found loose in the deposit. 
The ears were small and slender, many of 
them imperfectly formed or immature. 

Cist 8 is a five-sided structure of very 
large, regular slabs; its diameter is a little 
greater than that of Cist 7, but it is shal- 
lower, measuring only 1 foot 3 inches to the 
slab floor. No mud was used in chinking 
the slabs, and nothing of interest was found 
within. 

Cist 9, whose average diameter is 4 feet 
and whose depth is 2 feet 2 inches, has a 
well-paved floor. Its chief interest lies 
in the method that was employed to provide 
its wall with a smooth and even top. Only 
a small portion of this arrangement is 
preserved, but there is enough to illustrate 
the process very clearly. The main wall- 
slabs, although carefully selected to fit 
snugly against one another near their 
bases, leave nevertheless open gaps at their 
tops; the tops also are not all on exactly the 
same level (see, for example, pi. xv). In 
the present cist the gaps were closed with 
mud and the sand outside was filled in 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





40 



B A S K E T - M A K E R S 



against the wall to the top of the slabs. 
Then smaller slabs, resting flat on the sand 
outside, were laid in mud, their inner 
edges flush with the inner face of the wall, 
thus bridging the low places and gaps, and 
coping, so to speak, the entire edge of the 
cist (fig. 2). Kidder and Guernsey (op. 
cit., p. 87 and fig. 33) found a similar 




Fig. 2. — Diagrammatic section of Cist 9. 

cist (No. 12, Cave II) in Marsh Pass, 
Arizona, which was provided with a rim or 
coping of adobe and small stones. A roof 
rested on the coping. 

As was stated above, only a small part 
of this coping was preserved, nor was any 
similar arrangement found intact in other 
cists; it was probably, however, fairly 



INDIANNOTES 




i '7, 






< 
2 -I 
o ^ 



h- < 

o > 



o o 

Z -3 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




CIST 7. SHOWING CORN, AND COVERING OF GRASS ROLLED 
BACK 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


41 


common throughout the cave, as numbers 
of small slabs similar to the ones used here 
were found about the outside of other 
chambers. The fact that the coping lay 
flat on the outer sand and was entirely 
supported by it, proves that this cist, at 
least, was subterranean. 

Cist 10 is six-sided, and 2 feet 3 inches 
deep to the single large slab which floors 
it. An unusual feature is provided by an 
upright juniper post, 8 inches in diameter, 
incorporated in the wall at the south cor- 
ner, with the adjacent wall-slabs butted 
against it on each side. A single roofing 
pole of pine, 7 inches in diameter by 4 feet 
long, was found in place along the slabs 
forming the west wall. 

Cist 11, diameter 4 feet, depth 2 feet 
2 inches, is built of the roughest and crudest 
slabs seen in any structure in the cave; 
they vary in size from 1 foot long and U 
inches thick, to 3 feet 6 inches long and 1 
foot thick. The floor is very well laid, 
the component stones being neatly fitted 
together and the joints carefully mudded 
up. Three juniper roof-poles lay along the 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





42 


BASKET-IVIAKERS 




side walls; they measure respectively 4 and 
6 feet long, and are from 5 to 10 inches in 
diameter. 

Cist 12 is 4 to 4 feet 6 inches in diameter 
and of the usual somewhat irregular shape. 
Its depth is 1 foot 7 inches. The north 
half is built on and floored by the top of 
a great buried fragment of rock fallen from 
the cave roof; the remainder of the bottom 
is of sand. A little grass was used to plug 
the chinks between the wall slabs. 

Cist 13, 5 feet long, 3 feet 6 inches wide, 
closely adjoins No. 11 on the north. Its 
sides are made of ten slabs, 1^ inches in 
thickness, rising 2 feet 7 inches above the 
paved floor. The crevices between the 
abutting wall-slabs, as well as the jagged 
gaps between their tops, were stopped up 
with series of bunches of corn-husks tied 
together with yucca-leaves (pi. liv). Some 
of the series contained as many as seven 
bunches; the average, however, was four. 
This is one of two instances in the cave of 
the use of corn-husks as a protection against 
sand. 

Cist 14, a very small, squarish bin, lies 




INDIAN NOTES 




I DC 

I- < 

.. a. 

CO 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


43 


to the south of and a little deeper than 
Cist 13. It is made of five slabs, with a 
single large one at the bottom. There is 
no chinking. Depth, 1 foot 5 inches; 
greatest width, 3 feet. 

Cist 15 is more or less round, and is 6 
feet in diameter. The nine slabs that form 
its walls are very large, and many of them 
are approximately rectangular. Upright 
stakes about 2 inches in diameter are 
in place at six of the joints between slabs 
(pi. xxiii). The floor is of well-fitted 
slabs pointed up with adobe. Three short, 
heavy, juniper logs were found resting on 
the top of the wall. From the debris which, 
as usual, filled this chamber, there were 
taken: a section of matting made from long 
grass plants (pi. l), a crude wooden dipper 
(pi. Lix, e), and a single ear of corn. 

Cist 16. This is one of the smaller type 
of structures, its greatest length being 3 
feet 6 inches. It is 1 foot 9 inches deep. 
The wall is made of seven slabs, placed on 
end in more or less of a circle. The floor is 
paved and mudded up, and has a pronounced 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





44 



BASKET-MAKERS 



sag in the center, approximately 6 inches 
below the general level. 

Cist 17 has a diameter of 6 feet and 
measures 3 feet from the top of the wall- 
slabs to the floor, a depth equaled by only 
one other cist in the cave (No. 29). The 
largest wall-slab is 3 feet 9 inches long, 
about 4 feet high, and 2 inches thick; the 
rest are long, thin, rectangular pieces set 
up with great care and with their edges in 
all but one case abutting. The floor is 
composed mainly of two large slabs, smaller 
ones being used to complete the paving. 

Cist 18. After removing the 4 feet of 
debris which overlaid this cist, there came 
to light a very small bin built upon the fill- 
ing within it (labeled 18 A on the plan, pi. x; 
see also pi. xxiv). The small bin was made 
of six slabs, was unfloored, and contained 
nothing but sand. Its top was nearly 4 
feet and its bottom about 2 feet 9 inches 
above the floor of Cist 18. It was 2 feet 
8 inches long by 1 foot 9 inches wide. 

When the above little structure had been 
removed, the main cist was excavated. It 
proved to be one of the finest in the cave, 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




CISTS 23 (FOREGROUND). 22 (BEHIND 23). AND 21 (BEHIND 22) 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


45 


6 feet 6 inches in one direction, 7 feet in the 
other, and 2 feet 4 inches deep. The large 
selected slabs of its sides are very neatly laid 
up, the joints between them being so close 
that no mud or other chinking was necessary 
to keep out the sand. Five juniper poles 
were found roughly paralleling the slab 
walls or covering slight sections of the cist 
itself. These were of varying lengths and 
ranged from 2| to 8 inches in diameter. 

Cist 19, formed by the walls of Nos. 
17, 20, 30, and two slabs set on edge between 
nos. 17 and 20. was not at first considered 
a cist, but the appearance of the debris 
within the area and the care with which the 
two slabs had been placed to close the gap 
all pointed to its use at one time as a very 
irregularly shaped chamber, which depended 
largely on those surrounding it for walls 
and for roof support. Nothing of im- 
portance was found within. It was shal- 
lower than its neighbors and was unpaved. 

Cist 20 averages 4 feet in diameter and 
2 feet deep. It is well built. The seven 
slabs of nearly uniform size which go to 
make up the wall are reinforced at all but 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





46 


BASKET-MAKERS 




one joint by stakes reaching to an average 
height of a foot. The floor is of medium- 
sized slabs pointed up with mud mortar. 
Before the paving was laid a thin bed of 
oak-leaves had been spread over the pre- 
pared hole in order to prevent the sand 
from working up through the joints. Grass 
was used for this purpose under the floors 
of some other cists. Three short, heavy, 
juniper logs lay along the wall on the north 
side (pi. xxv). 

The debris filling and covering Cist 20 
was such a tangle of grass, corn-husks, 
corn-stalks, and sandstone slabs, that a 
shovel could not be forced into it. In the 
rubbish from the cist proper there was a 
considerable amount of prepared yucca- 
fiber; the fleshy parts of the leaves had been 
beaten out, but the fiber was still uncarded. 

Cist 21, roughly hexagonal, is 4 feet 
wide east and west by 4 feet 8 inches north 
and south; it is 2 feet 2 inches deep. The 
wall slabs are so neatly butted together that 
there was no necessity for mud or juniper- 
bark chinking between them. (See pi. xxvi.) 


- 


INDIAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


47 


Cists 22 and 23, each about 4 feet 6 
inches in diameter, are described together, 
because they form, in their presenf condi- 
tion, a single dumb-bell shaped chamber 
(pi. X, xxvi). Floor conditions, however, 
indicate that a slab once separated them, 
though it could not be found on excavation. 
Both cists are roughly paved. The depth 
of No. 22 is 1 foot 10 inches; of No. 23, 2 feet 
7 inches. The wall slabs of 22 are very small 
and narrow, whereas those of 23 are mostly 
large, one being 4 feet in length. The 
workmanship is poor in both, and the 
joints, though not tight, had never been 
chinked. 

Cist 24. This cist had been crushed flat 
by a fall of heavy rocks from the cave roof, 
and the five slabs forming its walls had 
been forced outward. When they were 
replaced in what was undoubtedly their 
original position, they formed a little 
squarish bin, 18 inches long, 15 inches wide, 
and 1 foot deep. No indications of chink- 
ing were found, nor was there a floor slab 

Cist 25. This cist and the two next to 
be described lie at the extreme west end of 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





48 


BASKET- M A K E R S 




the cave, where they are somewhat pro- 
tected by the low overhang of its roof; for 
this reason they were not so deeply covered 
by wind-blown sand as were those in the 
middle and eastern parts of the cave. No 
trace of roofing remains in any of them. 
Cist 25 is roughly circular; its wall is made 
of nine more or less uniform slabs, and it 
has the customary paved floor with mudded 
joints, its center depressed somewhat more 
than is usual. The average diameter is 
4 feet 8 inches, the depth 2 feet. 

Cist 26 is slightly smaller than No. 25. 
It is carelessly built, hexagonal in shape, 2 
feet deep, and has a floor composed of one 
large and one small stone slab with no mud 
between them. 

Cist 27 is made of five fairly regular slabs, 
and accordingly is pentagonal. The average 
width is 3 feet 6 inches. The construction 
is poor and the wall shaky. A single slab, 
considerably tilted, forms the floor; no 
doubt this is the upper surface of a mass 
of rock from the cave roof, but this could not 
be determined absolutely without destroying 
the cist. In the southeast corner there is a 




INDIAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


49 


small space between the rock floor and one of 
the wall-slabs. In brushing this out there 
was found a little pocket sunk below the 
level of the floor, which contained two fine 
stone pipes (figs. 26-29). 

Cist 28 The area enclosed by Cists 
4, 5, 6, 16, 17, 20, and 29 was covered, 
underneath the surface sand and the layer 
of matter debris, by a jumbled mass of 
rocks, probably formed by the scaling off 
of a large section of the roof prior to 
the first occupancy of the cave by man. 
Because the floor was so cumbered with 
rocks, no cists had been built in this sec- 
tion. The rocks do not show in the general 
photographs (pi. viii, ix), because the 
upper ones were removed during excava- 
tion and the lower ones were covered up 
again with sand to level the floor and 
facihtate moving about in the cave. When 
the south end of this rocky area was reached, 
work was begun on the exterior of Cist 
29 at its western side. After digging 
through the usual wind-blown sand and the 
general debris to the stratum of oak-leaves 
which generally marked the bottom limit 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





50 



BASKET- MAKERS 



of finds, the protruding butt of an oak pole 
and some strips of juniper-bark led to 
deeper excavation. After going down a 
little farther there was uncovered the roof 
of a very deeply sunk structure. The first 
thing encountered was an oval worked slab 



^-^^^ 



Qno 



C3O0Q 



TT^n 




\ (r777?////////////A ( D'//////A 
Fig. 3.— Diagrammatic section of Cist 28. 

of sandstone, 26 inches long, 23 inches wide, 
and \\ inches thick. Removing this 
a sort of hatchway apparently opening 
through a roof was found underneath. The 
stone was replaced and the area cleared so 
that the whole structure could be exposed 
and photographed (pi. xxvii). The rotted 
condition of the timbers, the constantlv 



IND IAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


51 


sifting sand, and the cramped space that 
had to be worked in, made this a difficult 
task. 

The structure proved to be a roof, the 
main supports of which were two logs (fig. 
3, a, a) laid north and south across the 
slab walls of an underlying cist. The 
western of these two timbers (its smaller 
end runs into the middle background of 
the photographs, pi. xxviii, xxix) was 
about one-third of a large box-elder riven 
lengthwise and measuring 11 inches across 
the split face (the original log was probably 
14 or 15 inches in diameter). The eastern 
main timber (running into the foreground of 
pi. XXVIII, xxix) was an unsplit box- 
elder 6 inches through the butt. Outside 
the two large logs and parallel with them 
were small twisted and forked scrub-oak 
poles and branches averaging 2 inches in 
diameter (fig. 3, b, b); these were laid close 
together on the slab walls, thereby com- 
pleting the roofing over the ends of the 
cist. Using the two heavy timbers as a 
support, four oak poles (c) 2 to 2^ inches 
in diameter, were laid on each side of the 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





52 


BASKET-MAKERS 




hatchway, at right angles to the main 
members. Five small poles and forked 
branches (d), paralleling the main members 
and resting on and at right angles to the 
oak poles (c), served to limit the western 
side of the hatch opening. One large crook- 
ed stick of oak and one small one {d') , laid 
in the same manner, formed the eastern 
side of the hatchway, an irregular opening, 
22 inches long north and south, by 13 
inches wide at the broadest part (pi. xxviii) 
The slab {e) lay over this opening, its north 
edge held up by a small oak stick, 1^ 
inches in diameter, which may be seen in 
pi. xxvni and xxix. The framework of 
the roof was thatched with long strips of 
juniper-bark and oak-leaves, making a thick, 
matted, sand-proof covering. 

When the roof was removed, the cist 
itself (pi. xxx) was examined. Its lower 
parts proved to be so damp that what- 
ever may have been in it had long since 
rotted away. The wall is made of seven 
slabs set at an angle of 15 degrees outward 
from the perpendicular. No mud was 
used in the joints, nor between the slabs 




INDIAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 



53 



which paved the floor. The bottom dimen- 
sions are: length 3 feet 6 inches, width 
2 feet, depth 2 feet 3 inches. Why a cist 
so small should have required so heavy a 
roof is hard to understand, unless it was 
designed to be buried under many feet of 
sand. The latter supposition is not improb- 
able, for this cist occupies by far the deep- 
est situation of any structure found in the 
cave. From its floor to the surface before 
excavation was 9 feet 3 inches. Its prob- 
able depth from the original living surface 
of the cave may be calculated: Cist 29, 
which adjoins it on the east, is 3 feet deep; 
the hatchway slab of Cist 28 is 6 to 8 inches 
lower than the floor of Cist 29; the roofing 
material is about 10 inches thick, and the 
depth of the cist itself is 2 feet 3 inches. 
As the wall top of Cist 29 was almost cer- 
tainly not higher than the ground level, 
we get a total depth to the floor of Cist 28 
of about 6 feet 8 inches. 

Whether Cist 28 is the only very deep 
example, or whether there are others, could 
not be determined, as the owner of the 
cave desired to preserve the excavated cists 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



54 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




intact, and deep digging in the loose sand 
about them would certainly have resulted 
in undermining and bringing down their 
walls. 

Cist 29 is situated very close to the rear 
wall of the cave. Its depth of 3 feet is 
equaled only in one other cist (No. 17). 
It is one of the most regular and best con- 
structed examples, and closely approaches 
a true circle (longest diameter 7 feet, short- 
est 6 feet). Thirteen rectangular slabs, 
varying in width from 1 foot 4 inches to 
2 feet 3 inches, and tilting slightly outward, 
compose its wall. Ten of the joints be- 
tween slabs are overlapped, the rest are 
butted together (pi. x); at three of the 
joints are supporting stakes. The floor is 
of large, well-laid slabs, pointed up, as 
are the interstices of the wall, with adobe. 
In spite of the fact that the sand in the 
lower parts of this cist was somewhat damp, 
there were recovered: a grass bag, a piece 
of red paint wrapped in yucca fiber, and 
part of the rim of a large, flat, coiled basket. 
The last specimen was far gone in decay 
and was saved only by the use of paraffin. 




INDIAN NOTES 



CISTS AND BURIALS 


55 


Cist 30 (pi. xxxi; fig. 4) is 4 feet 6 inches 
long, 3 feet 4 inches wide, and 1 foot 10 
inches deep. Its wall is made of seven 
slabs without chinking material between 
them; the floor is of small slabs, also un- 
chinked. This much of the cist is of nor- 
mal type, but about its top, and set back 
from 6 to 10 inches from the outside of the 
main wall, is a second wall of small slabs 
10 inches high. On the narrow bench thus 
produced around the lip of the cist there 
were found five small juniper poles resting 
on the slabs of the lower wall and follow- 
ing its outline closely (fig. 4). If more 
poles were laid upon the ones still in place 
in such a way as to cut across the angles 
produced by them; and if other poles were 
in turn laid upon this hypothetical second 
series in a similar manner, there would be 
produced a cribbed roof, in principle much 
like the roofs of the cliff-house and pueblo 
kivas of the northern San Juan district.^ 
The writer believes that such overlapping 
or cribbing was actually carried out in the 
present cist, and that the missing upper 
members were later removed, either by the 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





56 



BASKET-MAKERS 



a--'> 




Fig. 4.— Diagrammatic plan and section of Cist 30. 



INDIAN NOTES 



OTHER BURIALS 


57 


owners who wished to use them elsewhere, 
or by looters. Traces of this supposed 
system of roofing in the form of logs lying 
close along the wall tops were found in Cists 
10, 11, 15, 18, and 20, all medium to large 
chambers. The smaller bins were perhaps 
provided with movable slab covers or were 
roofed after the manner of Cist 28. 

From this cist was taken a yucca-leaf 
bag (pi. xxxiv), containing a quantity of 
corn on the cob. 

Cist 31. At the extreme eastern end of 
the cave a deep notch in the wall forms a 
small inner recess. Here, under nearly 

4 feet of debris and oak-leaves, was a cist 
2 feet 2 inches deep, but less than 2 feet 
in diameter. The seven slabs forming its 
sides are tilted outward about 15 degrees 
from perpendicular. The joints between 
them, although not mudded, are flush and 
even on the inside. The floor consists of 
a single slab. 

BURIALS NOT IN CISTS 

Four burials, aside from the two in Cist 

5 (A and B), were found. Three of these 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





58 



B A S K E T - M A K E R S 



were taken from near the west wall of the 
cave; the fourth from the rocky area within 
the main house group. 

Burials C and D. The same watercourse 
that had undermined and carried away the 
front of Cist 1 was responsible for the dis- 
turbed condition of these interments. 
Burial C, an infant, the bones badly dis- 
arranged, appeared to have been placed 
head south at the left side of the hips of the 
adult, Burial D. The latter, of which the 
pelvis and lower limbs alone remained, 
seemed to have been extended on the back 
with the head south. The upper part of 
the body and whatever offerings may have 
accompanied it had been washed away. 
The depth of these two burials was 2 feet, 
measured from the pelvis of D. 

Burial E. Two feet from the cave wall, 
and about midway between Cists 26 and 
27, there was found at a depth of 1 foot a 
bunched or secondary burial, consisting of 
the femora, pelvic bones, ribs, arm-bones, 
scapulae, and some of the vertebrae of an 
adult. All these were piled together with 
the femora crossed over the pelvic bones. 



INDIAN NOTES 



OTHER BURIALS 



59 



and the whole was covered with a fragment 
of a large, finely coiled basket (pi. xxxii). 
By the side of one of the humeri lay a 
pointed wooden stick, badly rotted. Near 
the bottom of the pile of bones was a small 
round stick, 9 inches long, a little less than 
three-eighths of an inch in diameter, with 
flattened ends; it was too far gone in decay 
to be saved. Some 20 inches east, in drier 
sand, was a double bundle of squaw-bush 
sticks wrapped with juniper-bark (see pi. 
XXXII and page 144). A lone slab stand- 
ing at the rear of the burial, and some scat- 
tered ones in the immediate vicinity, may 
possibly indicate the former presence of 
a cist; the evidence, however, is inconclusive. 
Burial F (pi. xxxiii) was found 5 feet 
north of the intersection of Cists 19 and 20. 
It was an adult. Whether or not the inter- 
ment had originally been made in a cist 
was again uncertain, since but one slab was 
found, fallen over against the skull. The 
grave was very badly disturbed, only the 
skull, lower jaw, upper vertebrae, and a 
few ribs being in place; the rest of the skele- 
ton was scattered through the surrounding 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



60 


BASKET- MAKERS 




debris for a distance of 20 feet. The head 
was pointed south. The remains lay at a 
depth of 3 feet below the surface, and at 
approximately the same level as the top of 
the slab wall of Cist 20. At the former 
position of the left shoulder was a single 
square-toed sandal, probably the remaining 
one of a pair (cf. Burial B, Cist 5). A 
ball of loosely twisted yucca cord and a 
bundle of prepared basketry splints were 
found close to the sandal. 

SUMMARY 

The cave is situated high up in the cHff 
and is difhcult to reach; it is sunless at all 
seasons of the year; it contained a very 
heavy deposit of tangled grass, juniper-bark, 
corn-husks, and other vegetable materials 
which had in it very few animal bones, 
almost no charcoal, and extremely few bone 
awls, flint chips, worn-out sandals, or other 
objects which are usually so common in the 
refuse of dwelHng-sites; finally, there lay 
below the mass of debris a number of slab- 
walled and slab-floored cists, sunk into the 
original sandy surface of the cave and giv- 




INDIAN NOTES 



SUMMARY 


61 


ing good evidence that they had formerly 
been provided with flat or, in some cases, 
cribbed roofs. The cists were small, aver- 
aging about 5 feet in diameter, and were 
so shallow that even allowing for the arch 
of a cribbed roof, the deepest of them could 
not have had more than 3 feet 6 inches or 
4 feet of headroom. 

The lack of debris of occupancy indicates 
plainly enough that Cave du Pont could 
not have been used to any great extent as 
a permanent habitation, and the cists are 
certainly too small to be considered houses. 
The place, however, was admirably suited, 
by reason of its inaccessibility and dryness, 
to the storage of crops, and it may well 
have served as a shelter for the people them- 
selves in times of danger or during periods 
of unusually severe weather. The cists were 
doubtless used as granaries for harvested 
corn and as caches for other property, and 
served a secondary purpose for the burial 
of the dead. The presence of the great 
amount of matted debris is easily accounted 
for. The larger cists were undoubtedly 
provided with roofs of small timbers and 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





62 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




poles, rendered sandtight by spreading over 
them layers of grass and juniper-bark (cf. 
Cist 2); the smaller cists were not roofed, 
but their contents were also protected from 
sand by layers of bark and grass (cf. Cist 
7). The periodical opening up of the 
caches for the removal of corn or other 
belongings would naturally have resulted 
in the scattering about of quantities of this 
material and the gradual forming of the 
matted mass that was found on the floor of 
the cave. The roof-beams have for the 
greater part disappeared; they were prob- 
ably removed when the place was aban- 
doned, for timbers are hard to cut with 
primitive tools, and the labor of carrying 
them to a new site was probably much less 
than that of felling and trimming others. 

There is some evidence of ancient looting 
in Cave du Pont, witness the disturbed con- 
dition of Burial F and the presence of cer- 
tain objects of value scattered through the 
debris about the cists. No such systematic 
spoliation took place, however, as is usually 
found on Basket-maker sites, presumably 
because few interments were made there. 




INDIAN NOTES 



SUMMARY 



63 



That there were once more bodies in the 
cave than were found on excavation is 
unlikely, for the old looters of Basket- 
maker cemeteries habitually scattered the 
bones of the dead in all directions, and no 
parts of skeletons were recovered which 
could not be referred to the five graves 
recorded. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



64 



PART II.— NOTES ON THE ARTI- 
FACTS AND ON FOODS 

By a. V. Kidder and S. J. Guernsey 



CAVE DU PONT is the only impor- 
tant Basket-maker site so far 
discovered that has yielded no 
trace of material referable to 
any later culture. The place was certainly 
never occupied by Cliffhouse people; and 
there are no indications, aside from the 
possible looting of cists, to show that it 
had ever even been visited by human 
beings subsequent to its abandonment by 
the Basket-makers. This, as has just been 
said, is an unusual state of affairs, for the 
upper layer of most caves of this type which 
have been thoroughly explored, have 
furnished more or less evidence of reoccu- 
pancy by later comers. Such conditions 
have, of course, been of the greatest value 
in providing stratigraphic data, and have 



INDIAN NOTES 



AGE AND CULTURE 


65 


enabled us to prove that the Basket-makers 
antedated the Cliffhouse-Pueblo people. 
Relative age once established, however, 
it becomes most desirable to obtain collec- 
tions of Basket-maker specimens which we 
can be certain are entirely unmixed with 
material from any succeeding culture in 
order that we may have a firm basis for 
comparative studies. The collection from 
Cave du Pont is just such a lot; it is large 
and well-preserved, excellently recorded 
in the field, and, most important of all, 
seems to be perfectly free from extraneous 
material; hence it is a great privilege to be 
able to examine and report upon it. The 
writers have been particularly impressed 
by the remarkable similarity, even in 
apparently unimportant details, between 
many of these specimens and corresponding 
Basket-maker objects which they have 
recovered in northern Arizona. It is obvious 
that at Cave du Pont we are dealing 
with an integral part of the regular Basket- 
maker culture, and the inference is strong 
that the Cave du Pont people were approxi- 
mately if not exactly contemporaneous with 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





66 


BASKET-MAKERS 




the Basket-makers of Marsh Pass and Grand 
Gulch. Further exploration in this newly- 
opened field is most desirable, not only for 
the purpose of tracing the exact limits of 
this interesting culture, but also to find out 
whether, and if so to what degree, it changes 
as it goes westward and northward toward 
those Californian and Great Basin cultures 
which in some ways it so much resembles. 

We must apologize for the constant 
references in the descriptions which follow, 
to our own publications; nothing else of 
a detailed nature, however, has appeared on 
Basket-maker technology. 

FOOD 
V^EGETAL FOOD 

Maize. — The common use of maize by 
the ancient inhabitants of Cave du Pont 
is proved by the great quantities of leaves 
and husks that were found in the debris. 
It is probable, indeed, that the primary 
purpose of the structures in the cave was 
for the storage of harvested crops of corn 
Cist 7, the only unemptied and undisturbed 




INDIAN NOTES 



M A I Z E 



67 



granary found, held three and a half bushels 
of corn on the cob, while 18 ears were 
taken from the disturbed filling of Cist 4 
A cache, apparently of seed-corn, for the 
ears were all fine, fully developed ones, was 
discovered in Cist 30; it consisted of 16 
ears enclosed in a crude bag of crushed 
yucca-leaves (pi. xxxiv). 

Dr. G. N. Collins, of the Bureau of 
Plant Industry, United States Department 
of Agriculture, has examined the entire 
collection of corn and has kindly contrib- 
uted the following notes:* 

It is a most interesting collection. The 
larger specimens, one of which is 19 cm. long and 
4 cm. in diameter, are the finest prehistoric 
ears I have seen. 
Number of roics. 

The numbers of rows of seeds vary from 10 
to 18. The absence of 8-rowed ears is worthy 
of note. Increase in the number of rows is 
supposed to be one of the results of selection. 
Eight-rowed varieties are common among 
the types grown by the present-day Indians, 
and one would naturally expect 8-rowed ears 
to be characteristic of primitive forms. The 
present-day distribution of 8-rowed varieties 
is fairly definite. In North America they are 
practically confined to the North. The New 
England flints and the soft varieties of the 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



68 



BASKET- MAKERS 



western Indians are characteristically 8-rowed. 
I know of no 8-rowed types in Central America 
or jMexico, but the character reappears in South 
America in connection with the large-seeded 
Cuzco varieties. 
Endosperm texture. 

Eighteen of the ZZ ears were classed as having 
horny or corneous endosperms, the remaining 
15 had starchy or amalaceous endosperms. 

In none of those classed as horny were the 
horny portions of the seed as extensive as in 
typical flint or pop varieties, and all fall into 
the seed type we have called tropical flint. The 
distinction between the horny ears and those 
classed as soft is not sharp and is somewhat 
arbitrary. 
Endosperm color. 

With the exception of one or two ears, the 
endosperm was some shade of yellow. Since 
the yellow color of the endosperm is always 
confined to the horny portion, it is difficult to 
be certain of the color in the soft seeds. There 
is however one undoubted instance of white 
endosperm. 
Aleiirone color. 

Twenty-five of the specimens appeared to 
have colorless aleurone and in none of the ears 
did all the seeds have colored aleurone. Tn 
several ears some of the seeds had an aleurone 
layer that is yellowish brown, probably a color 
to which blue aleurone disintegrates with time. 
Pericarp color. 

Twenty-five of the ears apparently had color- 
less pericarp. In five the pericarp was red and 
in one it was variegated. This is the first 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




CACHE OF SEED CORN IN YUCCA BAG. FROM CIST 30 
(Length of bag, 14 in.) 



i^ M 








<[MlltlilM ^ » » » » H i' iVm w 




MAIZE 



69 



instance I recall of variegated pericarp in pre- 
historic specimens. 
Color of cob. 

In all instances where the color of the cob 
could be observed, it appeared to agree with 
the pericarp color. That is, a red cob was 
associated with red pericarp and a white cob 
with colorless pericarp. 

The arrangement of the seeds in straight 
rows is as perfect as in modern varieties having 
a corresponding number of rows. The ears are 
rounded at the butt and unusually well filled. 
This character, together with the small ear 
stalk, is usually considered a mark of good breed- 
ing in maize, although both characters are not 
infrequent in varieties grown by primitive 
peoples. 

There are a few examples of what we have 
termed split seeds where the pericarp has burst, 
exposing the soft starch of the interior. This 
is a character only recently brought to the 
attention of geneticists working with maize, 
and it is of interest that this supposedly new 
character should appear in this old material. 
There is also in several cases a wrinkling of the 
pericarp that closely simulates another recently- 
discovered character, the inheritance of which 
has not been worked out. 

There is some evidence that the ears have 
been attacked by the corn ear worm {Chloridea 
obsoleta Fab). The apparently complete 
absence of damage by weevils is worthy of note. 
Some of the seeds in the lot numbered 10/3881 
may have been eaten by weevils, but most of 
the damage seems to have been done by rodents. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



70 


BASKET- MAKERS 




Later Dr. Collins requested Dr. William 
W. Diehl, mycologist in the Bureau of 
Plant Industry, to examine the material 
for evidences of fungus or bacterial para- 
sites, with the result that Dr. Diehl found 
the fungus Cladosporium herbarum (P.) 
Lk., a common saprophytic "species, at the 
base of corn ears submitted to him. Dr. 
Diehl could not say positively that certain 
smut-like spores observed are those of 
Ustilago zeae (Beckm.) Ung., but he 
strongly suspected them to be. Miss 
Nellie A. Brown, of the same Bureau, also 
examined the material at first thought to 
be bacteria, but because these lack the usual 
staining properties, she was not willing to 
express a definite opinion upon them, al- 
though she stated that they do suggest 
bacteria. 

Squash. — In Cist 4 were found the stem 
and pieces of the rind of a large squash. 
The rind is light grayish-green streaked 
with irregular markings of dark brownish- 
green. 

Acorns were picked up here and there 




INDIAN NOTES 



OTHER FOODS 


71 


in the debris, but whether or not they served 
as food is unknown; scrub-oak is common 
all about the slopes below the cave, and 
the rubbish contains a great quantity of 
oak-leaves, so that the presence of the 
few acorns recovered might well be 
accidental. 

Seeds. — The few specimens recovered 
have kindly been identified by Mr. P. C. 
Standley, of the U. S. National Herbarium. 
These are: a perennial sunflower {Helian- 
thiis sp.); a grass, probably Chenopodium 
fremonti, Wats.; and seeds of a species of 
Ephedra. 

Yucca-pod. — A single dry and shriveled 
specimen was found. Yucca fruits are 
eaten by the modern Pueblo Indians. 

Cakes of prepared food. — There are 
in the collection six round, flat cakes of 
vegetal substances; they are 2 to 3| inches 
in diameter and half an inch thick. Their 
color is dark-brown, and age has so hardened 
and shriveled them that their exact nature 
cannot be determined; it is certain, how- 
ever, that they are not lumps of resin, and 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





72 


BASKET- M A K E R S 




it is probable that they were some sort of 
food, prepared, kneaded to shape, and dried 
for future use. 

AXniAL FOOD 

The data on this subject are mostly in- 
ferential, for animal bones were extremely 
rare in the debris of the cave; only a hand- 
ful altogether was collected; the animals 
represented are: deer, jack-rabbit, cotton- 
tail rabbit, beaver, and an unidentified 
small mammal. That the Basket-makers 
were good hunters, however, may be in- 
ferred from the presence in the cave of many 
bits of deer and mountain-sheep hide, of 
feathers of several species of birds, and by 
the finding of two different sorts of game 
snares (see pp. 144-147). 

CLOTHING 
BODY CLOTHING 

Nothing much in the way of body cloth- 
ing has ever been discovered in Basket- 
maker sites, and Cave du Pont proved no 
exception to the rule. There are only a 




INDIAN NOTES 




a. = 

.o 
CO -' 

Q O 



CLOTHING 



73 



few small pieces of fur-cloth robes, and 
certain rags of dressed leather which may 
have formed parts of shirt-like garments. 

SANDALS 

The material consists of two pairs and 
five odd sandals; these are such interesting 
specimens that it seems worth while to 
describe them in detail. 

PI. XXXVI shows the upper surface and 
pi. XXXVII the soles of a pair of sandals 
found lying together in the rubbish. They 
are 10| inches long, square-toed and square- 
heeled, and without toe-fringes. The basis 
of the weave consists of 16 parallel warps of 
stiff, heavy, yucca cord. The weft is of 
much finer string (either soft yucca or 
Apocynum) twined- woven in such a way 
as to produce a rep effect on the upper 
surface, and a pattern of round raised lumps 
covering the entire sole. The details of the 
web and of the method of attaching the 
warps at heel and toe cannot be studied 
without damaging the specimens, which 
are stiff and somewhat brittle with age. 
The most striking feature of these sandals 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



74 


BASKET-MAKERS 




is the elaborate system of loops and tie- 
strings with which they are provided. As 
the illustration (pi. xxxvi) shows, there is 
attached to each edge of each sandal a 
series of loops of heavy three-strand yucca 
cord. There are fifteen such loops to a 
side, the one nearest the toe being 2-i inches 
long. Counting back from this first one, 
the loops become gradually longer, until 
the third from the heel is 4 inches long. 
The last two loops are much shorter. At 
the square heel are two thick tie-strings 
7 inches long, made by collecting and braid- 
ing together groups of protruding warp- 
ends. At the very corners of the heel are 
two other tie-strings, 8^ inches long; these 
are much lighter, each being made of a 
single two-strand yucca cord. The method 
of attachment is clear. The foot was 
placed on the sandal, and a cord was tied 
to one of the loops of the front pair; thence 
it was laced backward along the top of the 
foot through the succeeding loops to the 
instep (part of this lacing is still in place on 
the sandal shown in pi. xxxvi, b). The 
same string doubtless passed around the 




INDIAN NOTES 



S A N D A L S 


75 


ankle, taking in the longer loops toward 
the heel of the sandal, first on one side and 
then on the other, bringing them snugly 
up about the foot; it was probably tied 
back to itself on the instep. The two short 
loops on either side at the heel are bent 
strongly backward, showing that they were 
not included in the general lacing but were 
fastened close about the heel of the wearer. 
The sets of long tie-strings, mentioned 
above as having been made from warp ends, 
were presumably made fast around the 
ankle to hold the heel of the sandal well 
up against the foot. 

A single sandal of the same type was 
taken from the grave of Burial F. It is 
somewhat larger, measuring 11 inches 
long, 5 inches wide at the toe, and 3f inches 
at the heel. It is of similar weave with 
lumpy knot reinforcements on the sole, 
but has 20 instead of 16 warps and was 
also provided with a toe-fringe of yucca 
fiber. The side loops, though badly worn 
and frayed, appear to have been the same 
in number and arrangement, but the tie- 
strings have disappeared. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





76 


BASKET- MAKERS 




The system of attachment illustrated 
by these specimens differs from the side- 
loop tie of Cliff-dweller sandals in that 
the latter have short loops which are not 
pulled up to meet over the instep and about 
the ankle, but merely serve to hold a long 
lacing cord which crosses back and forth 
from one side to the other. ^ No example of 
the present style has yet been found in the 
Basket-maker caves of the ^larsh Pass 
district of northern Arizona, but the so- 
called "Princess," a Basket-maker mummy 
from Butler wash, San Juan county, Utah, 
now in this Museum, has on its feet an 
apparently almost identical pair. This 
type therefore is not restricted to the 
Kanab region. 

A second pair of sandals (pi. xxxvin), 
also chiefly remarkable for their elaborate 
attachment devices, were found over the 
left shoulder of Skeleton B, Cist 5 (see 
pi. xix). When discovered they were 
heavily caked with adobe, and are very 
stiff and brittle; the soles show long use, 
but are not worn through. In length they 
measure 9| inches; across the unfringed 




INDIAN NOTES 





5 I 
< 

Q 

< 

CO 

u. 
o 

IT 

< 




^ o 

cc '-' 
< -5 

CD bD 

C 



SANDALS 


77 


square toe they are 4| inches wide, at the 
heel 3| inches. There are 24 warps, the 
attachment of which at both toe and heel 
produces tightly woven and very strong 
selvages. The weave is close twined-work, 
making a plain rep effect above; the entire 
sole was apparently covered by a raised 
pattern. On the upper surface at the 
front there is a small transverse loop, made 
of several strands of human-hair string; 
this was for the insertion of the second and 
third toes; at the rear is a similar though 
broader loop designed to slip up over the 
heel (these loops do not appear in the 
photograph, pi. xxxviii). This is the 
normal equipment for the attachment of 
Southwestern sandals, both Basket-maker 
and Cliff-dweller, and is completed by a 
tie-string which passes through the toe- 
loop, runs up the foot, through the heel- 
loop on one side, over the instep to the 
heel-loop on the opposite side, returns to 
the instep, and is there made fast.^ In 
the present case the principle is the same, 
but the tie-string is more elaborate, both 
in structure and in rnanipulation. It is a 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





78 


BASKET-^IAKERS 




three-strand flat braid, each strand made 
up of 10 to 12 fine two-ply cords of human 
hair. The braided string is at least 10 feet 
long, and is twice carried backward and 
forward between toe-loop and heel-loop, 
then it is wrapped round and round on 
itself over the instep, as shown in the photo- 
graph, and is finally knotted near the toe- 
loop. As each tie-string is 10 or more feet 
long, is three-strand, and each strand is 
made of at least ten small two-strand cords, 
we get the surprising total of not less than 
2X10X3X10X2 = 1200 feet of fine 
hair string used for the attachment of this 
one pair of sandals. The above figures 
represent a bare minimum; the twist in the 
strings and the "take-up" in braiding 
probably required the use of 20 to 30 per 
cent more material than is recognized in the 
calculation. 

In pi. XXXIX is illustrated a coarsely made 
sandal 10 inches long. There are 12 warps, 
and the weft is as usual in twined weaving 
with raised knots on the sole. .Toe- and 
heel-loops are of heavy yucca cords doubled, 
and the tie-string is of twisted juniper-bark. 




INDIAN NOTES 



SANDALS 


79 


x^n interesting point about the tie-string 
is that it is fastened to the toe-loop in a 
single bowknot, the only case of the use of 
this knot which we have ever observed 
among Basket-maker remains. 

Two other single sandals present no 
unusual features; they are square-toed and 
square-heeled, rather coarsely twined woven 
over 15 and 16 yucca warps respectively; 
they have raised patterns on the soles, and 
the characteristic Basket-maker multiple- 
strand heel-loops. One is of child's size, 
6 inches long. 

From the general digging came a much 
rotted fragment of a sandal of the sort 
typical of the Marsh Pass and Grand 
Gulch Basket-maker caves. It has a 
colored design, and its sole is covered by a 
layer of close-set piling in minute loops. '^ 
The fabric is double-woven with sec- 
ondary warps and secondary wefts ly- 
ing below (on the sole side of) the main 
warps and wefts. The details of this com- 
plex weave have never been worked out 
because sufficient materials for dissection 
have not yet been recovered. Of the pres- 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





80 


BASKET-MAKERS 




ent specimen only the heel remains, so that 
it cannot be determined whether or not 
the customary toe-fringe of deerskin strips 
had been present. There are 26 yucca 
warps, and the wefts are of fine Apocynum 
(?) cord. Across the heel the warp-ends 
are held by a twining of human hair string. 

ORNAMENTS 

Necklaces. — From Cist 30 were taken 
the only two necklaces recovered. One of 
them (pi. XL, a), which is complete and 
still on its original cords, is perhaps the 
finest specimen of its kind, in perfection of 
workmanship and in harmom^ of color, 
that has yet been collected from a Basket- 
maker site. It consists of two strings, 
each 26 inches long, of brown beads, made 
by cutting off the ends of Ephedra seeds 
and working down their sides to an even 
cylindrical shape. The two strings are 
knotted to each other at the ends and are 
held together at regular intervals by string- 
ing on them six large discoidal beads of a 
very handsome green stone. The seed- 
beads average three-sixteenths of an inch 




INDIAN NOTES 



NECKLACES 


81 


long by slightly less than three-sixteenths 
of an inch in diameter, and their bore is 
about one thirty-second of an inch. There 
are 243 of them in the necklace. At one 
point there are introduced two black beads 
of similar shape; whether these are also 
seeds which have been smoked and greased 
or whether they are of albatite, as are some 
Basket-maker cylindrical beads collected 
by the authors at Sayodneechee, Arizona, 
we could not tell without unduly injuring 
them. 

Of the second necklace there were found 
only fragments (pi. XL, b), consisting of 
bits of fine yucca cord with numerous 
brown seed beads strung on them. They 
all appear to have formed part of a single 
ornament and, as the aggregate length of 
the various bits is 55 inches, it must have 
been an unusually long one. The individ- 
ual seeds are of the same species as those 
used in the perfect specimen just described, 
but they average smaller, and have been 
less carefully worked down, so that the 
corrugations of their original surfaces are 
not entirely obliterated. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





^2 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




Beads. — Of loose beads only two were 
found in the cave; one is the shell of a land 
snail, the spire of which has been broken 
away and the resultant hole carried through 
the shell in order to made an aperture for 
stringing; the second is a very small saucer- 
shape bead made presumably from the side 
wall of a large OlivcUa. The latter type of 
bead is particularly characteristic of the 
Basket-maker culture. 

Feather ornaments. — Although the 
specimens about to be described may per- 
haps have formed parts of ceremonial con- 
trivances, they almost certainly had no 
utilitarian purpose; and as we know that 
the Basket-makers made a variety of 
feather decorations, it seems probable that 
the following once belonged to something 
of the kind. 

There is a bunch of eight bright-colored 
tail-feathers of the red-shafted flicker, the 
butts tightly bound together with a strip 
of yucca-leaf (fig. 5). Another bunch 
(fig. 6) consists of six white tail-feathers of 
some small bird; these are lashed to the end 
of a thin stick with many turns of yucca 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




NECKLACE OF SEED BEADS AND PARTS OF ANOTHER 




o 
o _ 



_l ^ 
o "" 
cc 

Y. 

cc 

< 

CD 



FEATHER ORNAMENTS 



83 



fiber and sinew, which 
also hold bits of gray 
and blue down from the 
breast and belly of the 
Rocky Mountain blue- 
bird. The stick is broken 
off at the base of the 
lashings, so that one can- 
not tell whether this spec- 
imen is a fragment of a 
feather-ended wand such 
as is in the Grand Gulch 
collection of the Field 
Museum, Chicago, or 
whether it was the end 
of a feathered hair-orna- 
ment like one in the 
Stengel collection in this 
Museum. 

A very neatly prepared 
feather whose function is 
unknown appears in fig. 
7. It is apparently from 
the wing of a wild goose. 
The butt is broken away. 
At its tip a yucca cord is 




Fig. 5.— Feathered 
ornament. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



84 



B A S K E T - M A K E R S 





Fig. 6. — Feather 
ornament. 



Fig. 7.— Wrapped 
plume. 



INDIAN NOTES 



CRADLES 


85 


bound against the lower side of the quill, 
the sinew seizing which holds it being 
brought neatly round and round the 
quill through the separated pile. The 
cord extends somewhat beyond the tip of 
the feather and is wrapped closely with 
sinew.^ 

CRADLES AND ACCESSORIES 

No whole or even fragmentary cradles 
of the rigid, reed- or twig-backed variety 
typical of the Basket-makers were discov- 
ered, but certain pieces of grass and juniper- 
bark matting, found in and about the cists, 
may possibly be parts of such flexible 
cradles or baby-beds as those found in 
Cave 2, Kinboko, Marsh Pass, and described 
by us in a former publication.^ There was 
also recovered a crescent shaped roll of 
juniper-bark (pi. xli) that without much 
question served as the foot-support at 
the base of a rigid cradle.io 

TOY CRADLE (?) 

A pecuHar little object from the refuse 
may perhaps be identified as a toy cradle 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





86 


BASKET- MAKERS 




(pi. XLii). It is 15 inches long and consists 
of a single peeled twig bent double. The 
two tips of the bow are tied together with 
the pHable slivers of its larger end, rein- 
forced by a yucca-string binding. Across 
this frame is stretched an irregular net- 
work of long-twist yucca cord, and on the 
upper surface is a torn arrangement of 
strings. In general appearance this ob- 
ject resembles a miniature snowshoe, and 
the string arrangement just referred to 
bears out the likeness by its similarity to 
a foot-harness. There is also a series of 
string loops down one side and traces of 
the same on the other; the loops, however, 
run back to the pointed end of the specimen 
and would seem to be poorly adapted for 
attachment to the foot; they are, on the 
other hand, identical to the side-loops 
always placed along the edges of rigid 
cradles to hold the lashing cord that bound 
the baby in place. 

UMBILICAL-PAD COVERS (?) 

There are in the collection three furry 
bags which at first sight appear to be merely 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




TOY CRADLE 
(Length 15 in. 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




r 




UMBILICAL-PAD COVER AND CONTENTS 
(Length of d, 3\ in.) 



UMBILICAL PADS 


87 


skin pouches or containers; two of them, 
indeed, served as such, but closer in- 
spection shows that they must have been 
originally made and used for another 
purpose. 

Part of the regular equipment of the 
Basket-maker baby was a firm, flattish, 
oval pad, made by wrapping a soHd core of 
stone, bark, or corncobs with juniper-bark, 
and enclosing the whole in the soft skin of 
some small animal with the fur side outward. 
Such a pad was held in place over the navel 
of the newborn infant by means of a long 
string and served as do our modern "bind- 
ers" to prevent umbilical rupture. The 
fur "pouches" found in Cave du Pont are 
of exactly the correct size and shape for 
the covers of similar pads, and on examining 
them carefully it can be seen that they were 
not made like ordinary bags, with an open 
mouth at one end, but were in each case 
originally completely sewed up, with all 
but the last bit of seam turned inward, 
thus leaving no aperture at all, and were 
later reopened by tearing a hole in the skin 
itself along one of the sewed seams. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





88 



BASKET-:\IAKERS 



One of the three "covers" was found 
empty, the other two were reused as con- 
tainers. Of the latter, one held an assort- 
ment of oddments typical of Basket-maker 
''medicine pouches." It is described in 
another section (p. 147); as is there 
pointed out a shriveled object among the 
contents may possibly be a dried umbili- 
cal cord. The third "cover" (pi. xliii, d) 
held two small bunches of rabbit fur {h, c) 
and the most beautifully made tie-cord 
that we have ever seen (a). It consists of a 
loose, apparently two-stranded, twist of 
long, soft, white hair (presumably dog-wool) 
three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, 
overwrapped with narrow strips of the 
fine, furry, pure-white skin from the bellies 
of cottontail rabbits, thus making a won- 
derfully silky, pliable rope half an inch in 
diameter and 44 inches long. To one end 
of the rope is seized with sinew a yucca 
string 7 inches long, with knotted end; at 
the other is a similar cord 4 inches long 
(fig. 8), the end of which is tied around, and 
lashed with sinew to, the butt of what 



INDIAN NOTES 



UMBILICAL PADS 



89 



Dr. N. L. Britton, of the New York Botani- 
cal Gardens, identifies as a cactus spine 
from some member of 
the Echinocactus group, 
evidently from a locality 
as far south as southern 
Arizona. 

The use of the above 
contrivance is unknown, 
but in view of its having 
been found in what is 
without much doubt an 
umbilical-pad cover, and 
because of its beauti- 
fully soft texture, we 
think it likely that it 
was used as a lash-cord 
to attach a baby to its 
cradle. The sharp cac- 
tus-spine pin at one end 
would have been handy 
for threading the cord 
through the loops which 
are always present along the sides 
Basket-maker cradles, and which serve 
to hold the lashing.^^ 




Fig. 



-End of 



tie-stnng. 



of 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



90 



BASKET-MAKERS 



BASKETRY 

Nearly thirty specimens of basketry were 
recovered, mostly fragmentary. All of 
these are coiled ware, and all but four are 
of perfectly normal weave for the culture 
to which they belong. The foundation (fig. 9) 
is of two slim, peeled, willow or cottonwood 
twigs placed side by side, and above each 




Fig. 9. — Weave of normal coiled basketry. 

pair of twigs lies a bundle of yucca fiber. 
The sewing elements are wooden splints 
one sixteenth to three thirty-seconds of an 
inch wide (two packets, one of light-colored 
splints, one of dark, were found in the dig- 
ging; see pi. XLiv). The sewing element, 
in attaching each added coil to the one 
below it, encloses the two twigs and the 
bundle above them, and passes downward 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 





BUNDLES OF SPLINTS FOR COILED BASKETRY 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




COILED BASKET FROM BURIAL A 
(Diameter 18 in.) 



BASKETRY 


91 


and through the bundle of the coil below. 
The stitches do not interlock with the 
stitches of the coil below, but pass between 
them. In the diagrammatic drawing (fig. 
9) the weave is shown opened out; in the 
original specimens it is of course pulled 
tight so that the bundles fit close down 
upon the sets of paired twigs; the successive 
turns of the sewing element also lie snugly 
against each other, so that very little of 
the foundation material can be seen between 
them. In this particular most of the Cave 
du Pont basketry is superior to Basket- 
maker ware from other sites, in which the 
stitches are usually set relatively wide 
apart and reveal a considerable amount of 
the foundation. In fineness of weave there 
is very little variation between the different 
Cave du Pont specimens; the best made 
piece has 5 coils and 11 stitches to the inch, 
the coarsest 4| coils and 8 stitches. 

Three whole baskets were recovered. 
The largest (from Burial A, Cist 5) is 
bowl-shaped with flat base and widely-flar- 
ing sides (pi. XLv). It is 18 inches. in diam- 
eter by 4 inches deep. The decoration con- 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





92 


B A S K E T - IM A K E R S 




sists of two black coils near the bottom; 
and a single black coil just below the rim, 
from which extend downward at equal dis- 
tances from each other four small stepped 
units. The design is visible only on the 
exterior, the inside being colored dark wine- 
red; this may be paint or possibly an effect 
of decomposition (we have noticed a dark- 
red stain on several semi-decayed specimens 
from other Basket-maker caves). The 
last or rim-coil is somewhat more tightly 
and evenly wrapped than are the coils in 
the body of the piece; the last inch is fin- 
ished off and bound down with ''false 
braid." An interesting feature is the 
apparent "killing" of this basket by partly 
breaking in from the outside the bottom 
three or four coils. The evidence of "kill- 
ing" is even clearer in the specimen next 
to be described. 

Over the head of Skeleton B, Cist 5, lay 
a bowl-shaped basket, 9i inches in diam- 
eter, 4 inches deep, with flat base and 
steeply rising sides (pi. xlvi). It is so 
discolored that no decoration is observable. 
The rim is badly rotted, but the bottom is 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




COILED BASKET FROM BURIAL B 
(Diameter 9i in.) 




Q ^ 



o S 

-J s 



BASKETRY 


93 


firm and strong. The first three coils at 
the base have been broken inward; this 
was obviously done before burial, as the 
broken disc, still attached by a few strands 
of the sewing splint, is bent over and has 
stiffened and hardened into place in a way 
which would be impossible if the breaking 
had taken place in recent times. A coiled 
basket of this type is so strong and solid 
that great pressure must have been necessary 
to push in the bottom of it; hence the ob- 
served mutilation can hardly have been 
accidental and is probably due to intentional 
"killing." The above two mortuary bas- 
kets are well woven; each of them has 5 
coils and 11 stitches per inch. 

The small cup-like basket shown in 
pi. XLVii is from the general digging. It 
is 41 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep. 
The coil next below the rim is black, other- 
wise there is no decoration. The workman- 
ship is coarse; there are only 7 stitches to 
the inch of coil, and the foundation material 
shows between them. There are an un- 
usual number of split stitches, but they 
are for the greater part spHt at the sides of 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





94 


BASKET-MAKERS 




the splints, not squarely in the middle as 
in true split-stitch weaving. 

Among the numerous fragments of nor- 
mal coiled ware recovered, the majority 
are from bowl or tray-shaped baskets; 
there is one strong, thick piece (pi. xlviii, b) , 
however, which appears to be part of 
the flaring top of a large pannier or 
carrying basket. There was also found 
the unfinished base of a narrow-bottomed 
basket, possibly a pannier, but because of 
the fineness of the weave more probably 
a water-basket.^'^ As may be seen in the 
photograph (pi. xlix, a), the oval shape of 
the base is produced by laying the first 
few coils parallel to each other. The last 
turn of the coil is sewed with red splint. 

Only four examples of unusual weave 
were found, all fragmentary. The first 
of these (pi. xlviii, c) is a piece from the 
upper side of a large coarse basket. The 
foundation is normal, two-twig-and-bundle, 
but the sewing elements are whole yucca- 
leaves instead of wooden splints. Each 
turn of the sewing element splits a stitch 
in the coil below and then passes through 




INDIAN NOTES 




CO c 

\- H 
< 



BASKETRY 


95 


the fibrous bundle before rising for another 
revolution (fig. 10). When one of the leaf 
sewing elements has been nearly all woven 
in, it is carried downward on the outside 
of the basket across two coils, passed through 
the fabric, and trimmed off flush with the 




/J^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^/ /^~,,^r^/ /^\ 


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^M. 


^^^Sj^M^S^^f 


/ ^^3^y^^mm ^^3&^m .^^3^3 ^ 


'^-^^^p^^^^^^:^^^^^s 


^^3 ^^^ 1^^^ ^^^^ ^^~\ 


Fig. 10.— Diagrammatic drawing of weave shown in 

pi. XLVIU, c. 

inner surface. A new leaf is then introduced, 
as shown at &, fig. 10, This carrying down 
over two coils of the sewing elements as 
they terminate, results in the appearance 
on the outside of the basket of a number of 
double-length stitches (a, fig. 10). As the 
leaves used are all of approximately the 
same length, these double-length stitches 
occur at more or less regular intervals. 


AND MONOGRAPHS 





96 



BASKET- MAKERS 



and produce a variation in the otherwise 
monotonous texture of the fabric (see 

pi. XLVIII, c). 

The second unusual specimen is a very 
small piece. The foundation of the coil 
consists of a single twig completely encased 
in a padding of yucca fiber (fig. 11). The 
sewing splints are caught through the 




Fig. 11. — Diagrammatic drawing of single-rod weave. 

padding and so hold the coils together. 
The weave is coarse: 4 coils and 7 stitches 
per inch. 

Both the above are merely variants from 
the normal coiled basketry of the cave; 
the two remaining pieces represent an 
entirely different technique. They are 
unfinished bottoms of apparently shallow, 
bowl-like baskets. The construction in each 
case was started by rolling up a single splint 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKETRY 



97 



on itself like a watch-spring and then wrap- 
ping it with a splint to make a ring-like 
base about an inch in diameter (pi. xlix, b). 
The same splint was then passed around the 
peripher}^ of the base, being sewed through 
it and leaving standing loops for the en- 




FiG. 12. — Diagrammatic drawing of weave of sifter basket. 

gagement of the binder of the first coil. 
The foundation of the coil is a single slim 
osier and the fabric is held together by the 
binding splint as shown in fig. 12. This 
results in a very open but very firm and 
stiff weave, and it is probable that baskets 
so made were used as sifters. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



98 



BASKET- MAKERS 



MATTING 

Among the rubbish in the cave there 
occurred many pieces of worn-out and dis- 
carded mats quite unlike the neatly plaited 
twilled rush mats of the cliff-houses. Thev 



^^^ 




Fig. 13.— Diagrams of plain and tied twining in 
mat-making. 

are all made of thin bundles of soft vege- 
table substances. The bundles are laid 
close together side by side and held in that 
position by rows of yucca-leaves or string, 
widely spaced and inserted in twined weav- 
ing (pi. L, Li). The material for the bundles 



INDIAN NOTES 



eASKET-MAKER CAVE 




-^^^^^ X 



MAT MADE OF WHOLE GRASS PLANTS 




^^-^^ 



MATTING 


99 


is most commonly the long grass called by 
the Mormons ''wild hay"; this was some- 
times used in the form of whole plants 
pulled up by the roots (pi. l), sometimes in 
bunches of the stems (pi. li, a), sometimes 
pounded and shredded. Juniper-bark in 
strips or shredded; mashed yucca-leaves 
(pi. LI, /)); and cattail rushes were also 
much used. The rows of twined weaving 
that hold the bundles together are set from 
3 to 5 inches apart. Plain twining (fig. 
13, a) and tied twining (b) are about equally 
well represented, the latter method having 
been employed as a rule when the materials 
in the bundle were more or less flimsy. 
The usual way of carr3dng the twining- 
strands down the edge of the fabric for a 
new crossing is shown in fjg. 14; the selvage 
thus produced is strong and serviceable. 

Although for convenience we call the 
above specimens mats, we have really no 
data as to their former size or as to the 
uses to which they were put. As a matter 
of fact they were probably general-utility 
affairs, serving spread out for mats, or with 
the edges turned up and caught together 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





100 



BASKET- MAKERS 



for flimsy carrying bags or cradles; and. 
when partly worn out, as covering material 
on the roofs and over the hatchway-open- 
ings of storage cists. 

More carefully made mat-like fabrics 
are shown in pi. lii, liii. The former is a 




Fig. 14. — Normal selvage of matting. 

small, rectangular piece, 7 by 10 inches, 
consisting of a single three-strand braid of 
juniper-bark looped back and forth on itself 
and firmly held by four rows of twined 
yucca strings, each row having from four 
to six crossings. The method in which the 
binding strings are brought down the edge 



INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




SMALL MAT OF BRAIDED JUNIPER-BARK AND STRING 
(Length 10 inj 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 



j^^ 




U^i 



FABRIC OF YUCCA-LEAVES 

(Length l.H in.) 



MATTING 



101 



is shown in the diagrammatic drawing 
(fig. 15) . The second specimen (pi. liii) has 
a framework or warp of 8 pairs of vucca- 
leaves, across which other yucca-leaves 
are closely twined-woven to make a narrow 
fabric about 15| inches long. The warps 




Fig. 15.— Diagram of selvage of small mat. 

protrude at each end, and the piece has 
a sandal-like appearance, but the wear which 
is present on one side is general, rather 
than localized (as is the case with sandals) 
in certain spots, and there is no trace of 
any arrangement for attaching the object 
to the foot. 
Although not mats, strictly speaking, a 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



102 


B A S K E T - ?^I A K E R S 




number of corn-husk pads used for pre- 
venting sand from sifting through the 
joints of cists, may be mentioned here, as 
they are put together in the same way as 
the fabrics just described. They are made 
of the complete empty husks, including the 
stems, of large ears of corn. Four to six 
or seven of these are laid side by side and 
held together by single rows of tied twining 
(pi. LIV). 

STRINGS AND CORDS 

Among the American Indians the spin- 
ner's art is doubtless a very ancient one, 
far antedating agriculture or the manufac- 
ture of pottery. This has, of course, long 
been known to anthropologists, but it is 
strongly emphasized by the quantity and 
excellence of the cordage found among the 
relics of the Basket-makers, a people who 
had no true pottery, and who were only on 
the threshold of an agricultural life. The 
rubbish in Cave du Pont yielded a remark- 
ably fine collection of raw materials; of 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




CORN-HUSK PAD USED FOR CHINKING CISTS 

(Width 12 in.) 




O o 

U. '-I 

cc « 
-■5 



STRINGS AND CORDS 


103 


strings in process of manufacture; and of 
specimens of the finished products. 

It seems certain that the Basket-makers 
produced their string entirely by hand, 
for no spindles or spindle-whorls have ever 
been found in their caves. The principal 
raw material was yucca-fiber, but Apocy- 
num and human hair were also much used, 
and to a less extent juniper-bark and dog- 
wool. The present collection is particu- 
larly rich in specimens showing the processes 
of extracting and spinning yucca-fiber. 
There are bunches of yucca-leaves stripped 
from the parent plant and tied up for 
transportation or storage; large masses of 
matted fiber apparently soaked or boiled 
and with bits of the fleshy parts of the 
leaves still entangled in them (pi. lv, a, d) ; 
other masses of fiber cleaned and ready for 
spinning (pi. lv, h, c); and numerous pieces 
of string in manufacture with one end 
tightly twisted, the other tailing out into 
loose, untwisted fibers. 

The finished strings are of great variety, 
in size, twist, and materials; there are 
specimens in yucca-fiber, Apocymim, juni- 




AND MONOGR A P H S 





104 



B A S K E T - :M A K E R S 



per-bark, box-elder bark, animal wool, and 
human hair; the range in diameter is from 
less than one thirty-second of an inch to a 
trifle over one quarter of an inch. In 
twist almost every piece is anti-clockwise, 
though the component plies of multiple- 
stranded strings are sometimes spun clock- 
wise. Two-ply twist is the usual type; 
three strands are often used for heavier 
cordage; and some bits of four-, five-, and 
six-ply twist occur. Three-strand braids 
of yucca strings are common and seem to 
have served where an extra strong ligature 
was needed. Bits of fur string and feather 
string for blankets were recovered: the 
former were made by twisting narrow strips 
of hide about heavy yucca cords; the latter 
by using similar strips of the skins of small 
birds No example of turkey-feather string 
was found. 

Of interest as showing the variety of the 
spinner's art are the contents of a ''work- 
bag" recovered from the rubbish (pi. lvi). 
In addition to nearly a quart of wild sun- 
flower seeds, it held thirteen loose hanks 
made up as follows (see pi. lvii) : 



INDIAN NOTES 



STRINGS AND CORDS 


105 


(1) Very fine two-strand yucca threads. 

(2) Extra-fine two-strand yucca threads, 
diameter less than one thirty-second of an 
inch. These are the sort of threads com- 
monly employed in sewing leather. 

(3) Bunch of work-ends and clippings of 
all sorts of strings, heavy and light, harsh 
and soft, some of yucca, some of Apocynum. 
x\mong them is a single piece of very hard 
and wiry three-stranded yucca string, 
diameter three thirty-seconds of an inch; 
this is the type of string used for the warps 
of high-grade sandals. 

(4) Skein of very kinky, two-strand 
Apocynum (?) string; this is apparently 
weft material for sandals. 

(5) Larger bundle of the same. 

(6) Skein of four-strand string, soft and 
pliable. 

(7) Skein of *' contrast-twist," i.e. string 
made of strands of different colors. This 
example has two strands died black and 
one of natural (grayish-white) color. Diam- 
eter three thirty-seconds of an inch. 

(8) Skein of similar "contrast-twist," 
three-strand, one red, two natural. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





106 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




(9) Skein of " contrast-twist," two-strand, 
one brown, one black. With this skein are 
a few strings of human hair. 

(10) Hank of two-stranded string dyed 
bright-red. 

(11) Bunch of coarse, uncombed yucca 
fiber. 

(12) Bunch of finer fiber. 

(13) Strings partly twisted, ends still 
in the fiber. 

The container of the above-listed ma- 
terials is the only example of the typical 
Basket-maker twined bag in the collec- 
tion;^^ it is also the only piece of cloth-like 
textile found in Cave du Pont. It is a 
small specimen, considerably frayed and 
worn, and lacking the upper part or neck; 
this edge has been whipped with stout 
yucca cord to prevent raveling. The body 
of the bag is decorated with alternate narrow 
stripes of red and black. The weave is 
fine, there being 9 to 11 warps and 18 
to 20 weft-pairs per inch. 




INDIAN NOTES 



ATLATL DARTS 


107 


OBJECTS OF WOOD 
ATLATL DARTS 

One of the few characteristic Basket- 
maker implements which is lacking from the 
Cave du Pont collection is the spear-thrower 
or atlatl. There is no doubt, however, 
that this contrivance was in common use, 
for there were recovered a number of pieces 
of the typical light spears or, more properly 
speaking, darts, that were always used with 
it. These darts were a little more than 50 
inches long. At their butt-ends the shafts 
were cupped to engage the spur of the thro w- 
ing-stick; a feathering of three plumes was 
set about two inches from the cupped end. 
At the tip the darts were deeply socketed for 
the reception of short wooden foreshafts. 
The foreshafts were usually provided with 
tanged points of stone. 

Shafts.— The best-preserved specimen 
in the present collection is a section, 3 
feet 6 inches long, broken from the distal 
end of a dart of this sort. The material 
is a box-elder branch five-sixteenths of an 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





108 



BASKET- MAKERS 



inch in diameter at the tip, 
straightened and peeled but not 
otherwise worked down (fig. 16 
shows the end of this piece) . The 
foreshaft is missing, but the end 
of the shaft is socketed for its 
reception and was strengthened 
and kept from spHtting by a 
" liiiill seizing of sinew If inches wide; 
this has disappeared, but its 
former width is indicated by deep 
scorings made in the wood to give 
it a firm seat. Such scoring has 
not previously been noted at this 
part of a shaft. At 3| and 4f 
inches respectively from the socket 
end are broad sinew bindings (see 
fig. 16). Up to the second bind- 
ing the shaft is painted red; at 
13 inches from the broken end 
the red color begins again. There 
is a battered fragment from the 
same part of another shaft. 
Fig. 16.— Tip- Although the socket is bro- 

end of dart show- , , i i , •. i 

ing socket for ken, the wood about it shows 
reception of fore- ^^^^-^^^ f^, reinforcing liga 



INDIAN NOTES 



ATLATL DARTS 


109 


tures. The only piece from the butt, or 
proximal end, of a shaft is three-eighths of 
an inch in diameter ; it has the typical shallow 
cup at the end for the reception of the spur 
of the spear- thrower. 

An interesting find consists of a bundle 
of five sticks tightly bound together with 
yucca-leaves. They are straight shoots 
of some light but tough wood; the bark 
has been peeled and the twigs trimmed off. 
The ends were severed by hacking and 
breaking. The longest stick measures 75 
inches, the shortest 70; the large ends aver- 
age three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 
the small ends seven- sixteenths of an inch. 
Three complete atlatl darts in the Peabody 
Museum collection average about 55 inches 
long, one half inch thick at the proximal end 
and three-sixteenths of an inch at the distal. 
If the present sticks were cut so that their 
ends had diameters corresponding to the 
above, they would have a length of almost 
exactly 55 inches; hence it seems probable 
that they were designed for use as dart- 
shafts. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





no 



BASKET-iVIAKERS 




Fig. 17. — Feather 
with butt plugged. 



The only other spec- 
imen that once formed 
part of a mam-shaft is 
a very large white 
feather, badly eaten 
by insects. The butt 
has been cut off and 
the hollow quill 
plugged for an inch or 
so with a bit of split 
willow (fig. 17). This 
plugging of the quill 
is characteristic of 
the feathers used for 
winging Basket-maker 
darts; it was probably 
done to render the end 
solid enough to be 
bound firmly in its 
correct position on 
the shaft. 

FOJIESHAFTS. — Of 
the foreshafts , that 
were used at the ends 
of the main-shafts 
there are several ex- 



INDIAN NOTES 



ATLATL DARTS 



111 



Fig. 18.— Foreshafts for atlatl darts. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



112 


BASKET- MAKERS 




amples. 


The base of each one has been 




tapered 


to fit into the socketed end of the 




main-shaft of the dart; at the opposite 






extremity of each there has 




IKy 


H been neatly cut a deep, narrow 




ill'' 1 


Jl notch to hold a stone point. 




1 i! t 


H In doing this care was evi- 




1 Iji 

Brail It'' 1 

P 

li 

lifiil i ' 

ollllll '' 

ii 


II dently exercised not to split 
ij the stick. Two of the spec- 
j 1 imens (fig. 18, a, b) were ob- 
'II viously never put in service, 
1 for the notches show no trace 
1 1 of use; the third, however, once 
m had a point mounted in it, as 
. is proved by grooves cut about 

I the end to give a grip to the 

II seizings, and by the wear in the 
|i bottom and sides of the notch 




1 nul*iV 




mi 


:f itself. The shortest of these 




it 


III foreshafts measures 3f inches 




1 


II in length, the longest 4i inches. 

1 Another specimen (fig. 19) 

1 may perhaps be part of a bunt- 

/ headed foreshaft. The butt is 




Fig. 19.— 


Bunt tapered as if to fit in a socket; 




foreshaft 


^■^- the forward end is rounded off 




INDIAN NOTES 



DIGGING-STICKS 


113 


and bears scratches such as might have been 
made by fitting the hollow part of a blunt- 
ended bone down over it. Complete ex- 
amples of this sort of foreshaft, with their 
bone tips in place, are figured by Pepper ;i* 
the wooden parts of these devices are, as in 
the present case, considerably shorter than 
the sticks of stone-tipped foreshafts. 

DIGGING-STICKS 

PL LViii illustrates certain long, sharp- 
pointed or thin-bladed objects of wood that 
were found in the matted debris. These 
were without much doubt used for work 
in the ground, such as planting and culti- 
vating corn and also for excavating storage 
cists in the hardpan of caves.^^ Although 
the crook-end specimens (pi. Lvni, a, b) 
are neither of them complete, they are 
so much like digging-sticks from other 
Basket-maker caves that we do not hesi- 
tate to identify them as such.^^ The short 
piece (pi. Lvm, a) is made from a peeled 
limb; the crook is artificial; the longer 
one {b) is 31 inches in length, the crook 
in this case was produced by cutting away 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





114 


BASKET- MAKERS 




nearly half the diameter of the stick for a 
space of 9 inches and then bending this 
thinned portion over with the flat surface 
underneath; the lower end of the specimen 
is now blunt, but there are indications that 
it was once tapered to a point. 

The two straight specimens (pi. lviii, 
c, d, the latter photographed in side-view 
to show the thinning of the blade) are 
3 feet 1 inch and 3 feet 2 inches long re- 
spectively; each is approximately an inch 
in diameter. Both are made of hardwood 
branches with the bark removed and the 
knots rubbed smooth. The butts are 
rounded off and the tips are worked into 
thin blades about 9 inches long. The blades 
are smoothed as if by long use in the soil. 
Sticks of this sort have been found in other 
Basket-maker caves, but are not peculiar 
to the Basket-maker culture, as similar 
ones occur in the cliff-houses, and are. 
indeed, still in use for agricultural work 
among the Hopi and the Navaho. 

The very slender rod (pi. lviii, e), length 
34 inches, has one end sharply pointed and 
much worn. The object is so frail that 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




I 






AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS 
(Length of d, 36^ in.) 



-v^ ,--^.-?" "r^^" 



•--.^t 



w 



/ 




Q 
O 
O 

o .S 

CO '- 

I- ^ 

o « 

U 4-, 

-5 O 

OQ ^ 

o -a 

u g 



WOODEN SCOOPS 



115 



it could hardly have been of service for 
heavy work in the earth, but it might have 
been used as a planting-stick. 

PL Lvm, /, is a very characteristic Bas- 
ket-maker digging tool. It is 35 inches 
long. The material is the gnarled root, 
apparently, of a hardwood tree, with the 
irregularities partly rubbed down. The 
lower or working end is fashioned into a 
thin blade 10^ inches long by H inches wide; 
the handle has a slight natural bend. We 
have found several sticks in Basket-maker 
caves of the Marsh Pass region of Arizona, 
which are closely similar to this one, in 
material, general shape, and size of blade. 
They are all quite different from the cliff- 
house digging-sticks, which are character- 
ized by lightness, careful shaping of the 
whole shaft, and by the presence at the 
upper ends of neat round knobs for 
handles. ^^ 

WOODEN SCOOPS 

In every Basket-maker cave that we have 
excavated, and in Cave du Pont as well, 
there have turned up in the sand or rub- 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



116 



BASKET-MAKERS 





bish about the cists a 
certain number of scoop- 
like objects of wood. 
They range in length 
from 5 to 18 inches and 
consist of thin sections 
from the outer parts of 
logs of wood; their outer 
surfaces are unworked 
and retain the natural 
convex form of the log 
(pi. Lix, a, c), their inner 
surfaces have been made 
concave by charring and 
scraping (pi. lix, b, d, 
e); their edges and ends 
are always much worn. 
Aside from these general 
characteristics the speci- 
mens do not lend them- 
selves to description, for 
they vary infinitely in the 
details of size and shape. 
Experiment has shown 
that they are excellent 
tools for scraping out 



INDIAN NOTES 



FEATHER-BOX 


117 


loose sand (as in digging a cist) ; they would 
also have served admirably, if used in pairs, 
for transporting embers or for handling hot 
stones in basket cookery.^^ 

FEATHER (?) BOX 

This neat little object (fig. 20) was made 
by cutting a section 10 inches long from a 
Cottonwood limb 2 inches in diameter. 
The bark was peeled off and the ends rubbed 
sm_ooth. A cavity 8 inches long by IJ 
inch in depth was dug out on the upper 
surface. At one end, as shown in the 
figure, are traces of a fret design in black 
paint. The specimen was doubtless a 
container of some sort, and, provided with 
a leather flap would have made a very 
satisfactory receptacle for feathers or other 
fragile articles. Similarly shaped, though 
usually smaller, receptacles were used as 
trinket-boxes by many Pacific Coast tribes. 

OBJECTS OF BONE 

As in the case of stone implements, so 
little is known of the tools of bone produced 
by the Basket-makers that it seems best 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





118 


BASKET- MAKERS 




to record all of the few examples which were 
found in the refuse of Cave du Pont. 

AWLS 

The material consists of three complete 
and two fragmentary specimens. The 
longest (pi. LX, c) measures 6f inches over 
all; it is made from a long-bone, presumably 
of deer, spHt lengthwise; the cut edges are 
well worked and the point is keen; the 
proximal end is rounded but not chisel- 
edged. Figs, a and b of the same plate 
show awls 3i and 3| inches long respectively. 
The latter is made from the tibia of a large 
species of Lepus, probably Lepus californi- 
cus deserticula, which ranges over nearly 
all of Utah. The head of the bone is un- 
altered and still retains the dried ends of 
the tendons; the only work has been to cut 
the shaft obliquely across and to point the 
end by grinding. The metapodial of an 
immature deer served for the raw material 
of the second short awl (pi. lx, a). The 
bone was split and the end brought to a 
short but keen point. 




INDIAN NOTES 



BONE TOOLS 



119 



^^ 



\ 



The two fragmentary awJs have both lost 
their tips. One of them, made from a split 
deer metapodial, with the 
head of the bone nearly- 
worked away, has a length 
of 4| inches; it was prob- 
ably once about 7 inches 
long. The other is part of 
a similar awl; after the tip 
was broken off the imple- 
ment was used for some 
rough work, possibly flaking, 
which has battered and 
rounded the broken end. 



KXIFE-LIKE TOOL 

This is a splinter from the 
side of a large long-bone 
(fig. 21). One end has been 
ground to a sharp-edged 
triangular point. The rest 
of the bone is unaltered 
except for the original spHt- 
ting, but the raw surfaces 
have been worn and 
smoothed down by long 



\\\ 



'"il 



Fig. 21.— Knife- 
like bone tool. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



120 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




handling. This tool would have been a 
very handy one for separating the hide 
from the flesh during skinning; or it might 
have been used as a bark-stripper. 

SCRAPERS 

There are but two bone scrapers from 
Cave du Pont. One (pi. lx, d) consists of 
the lower end of a deer tibia from which the 
head has been neatly removed by grooving 
and breaking. The remaining piece of 
bone is 9| inches long. The anterior 
surface of the shaft has been cut away, 
along with part of the same surface of the 
lower joint. The resultant edges of the 
exposed cavity are well worn, particularly 
at the upper end. The specimen was per- 
haps a beamer for scraping hides, although 
the wear is not localized at the middle as 
is the case with the beamers of the Plains 
and Mississippi Valley tribes. In spite of 
the obviously long use to which this speci- 
men has been subjected, the bone has a 
fresh, almost greasy look, and the roots of 
tendons are still attached to the joint. 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




BONE AWLS AND SCRAPING TOOL 
(Length of d, 9f in.) 



BASKET. MAKER CAVE 




WRENCH AND SICKLE-SHAPED OBJECT OF MOUNTAIN- 

SHEEP HORN 

(Lsngth of a, 6f in.) 



BONE OBJECTS 



121 



The second scraping tool is 
a piece of deer or mountain- 
sheep scapula 3 inches long by 
2 1 inches wide. The edges are 
worked thin and the surfaces 
show many fine, straight 
scratches running in all direc- 
tions. 

PROBLEMATICAL BONE 
OBJECTS 

In fig. 22 is illustrated a 
piece of deer-rib, 8 inches long. 
The sternal end is worked 
round, the vertebral end broken 
away. On the sharp edge of 
the rib near the broken end is 
a series of grooves worn in the 
bone. These are deepest at the 
middle of the series, where they 
have penetrated to the hollow 
interior, and become shallower 
at the two ends. Though these 
grooves are very smooth, the 
sides of the bone are not at all 
polished. To what purpose 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



122 


BASKET-:\IAKERS 




this tool could have been put is unknown; 
the grooves look as if they had been made 
by the play of strings over the edge of the 
bone, but the unworn sides show that it 
could not have served as any kind of batten 
for textile work. 

The second piece is a two-inch fragment 
from a similar specimen. It is badly 
mouse-gnawed, but still retains on one edge 
a row of deeply- worn grooves. 

OBJECTS OF MOUNTAIN-SHEEP 
HORN 

SICKLE-SHAPED IMPLEMENT 

This tool (pi. LXi, b) was found with 
Burial B, Cist 5 (see pi. xix). It is made 
from a thin section split from a large horn. 
The dimensions are: length across the 
curve, 12^ inches; maximum width, 2 inches; 
average thickness, three-eighths of an inch. 
The object was probably steamed and 
flattened, but how much of its present 
curved shape is natural and how much due 
to artificial warping cannot be determined. 
The original corrugations of the horn. 




INDIAN NOTE S 



HORN IMPLEMENTS 


123 


though they have been almost obUterated 
by scraping and rubbing, appear faintly 
on one of the flat surfaces of the specimen 
(see pi. LXi) ; the other or split side has been 
worked smooth. The convex edge is round 
and unworn; the concave edge has either 
been sharpened intentionally or has been 
worn sharp, and the sides of the tool are 
more or less polished to a depth of about 
one quarter of an inch from this edge, the 
higher polish being on the corrugated side. 
The smaller, or what appears to have been 
the handle end, of the specimen is noticeably 
rougher than the rest of it, but gives no 
definite evidence of hafting. 

The use of this nicely-made tool is prob- 
lematical. If held by the small end it 
would have made an excellent sickle for 
cutting weeds or soft grass; or grasped in 
both hands and pulled toward the body it 
would have served well as a beamer for 
working hides. 

WRENCH 

This is a very heavy, thick piece about 
6f inches long from near the tip of a large 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





124 



BASKET- MAKERS 



horn (pi. LXi, a). The big end was crudely 
hacked off, but subsequent wear in service 
has smoothed this roughness down. A 
single hole nine-sixteenths of an inch in 
diameter has been bored through the piece. 
There are evident signs that hard objects, 
such as sticks, have been passed through 
this hole and pried up and down in the 
process, for its orifices are worn smooth and 
slightly funneled. There is little doubt 
that the contrivance served as a wrench for 
truing up green or perhaps steamed sticks; 
it might also have been useful as a sizer or 
gage if it was desired to select a number of 
sticks of the same diameter. 

OBJECTS OF STONE 

We know less about the stone imple- 
ments of the Basket-makers than we do 
about any other phase of their material 
culture. The reason for this is that no 
long-inhabited dwelling-site whose rubbish 
might be expected to be rich in lost or dis- 
carded stone specimens has yet been dis- 
covered. That these people were expert 



INDIAN NOTES 



STONE OBJECTS 


125 


workers both in flaking and in grinding 
stone is amply proved by specimens al- 
ready published, and by some of the ex- 
amples about to be described from Cave 
du Pont; but the present collection, like 
all other lots of Basket-maker material, is 
very poor, numerically speaking, in such 
artifacts, and still leaves us in doubt as to 
whether or not many important categories 
of objects were represented at all in the 
culture. For example, axes, celts, scrapers, 
and drills, all more or less common in the 
cliff-houses of this general region, are 
entirely lacking from authentic Basket- 
maker collections. 

HAMMERSTONES 

The following are the first objects of 
their kind which have been taken from a 
Basket-maker site. There are three com- 
plete and three fragmentary specimens, 
most of them waterworn pebbles of impure 
quartz, about the size of one's fist. Their 
surfaces show both battering and rubbing 
as if they had been used indift"erently as 
hammerstones and as smoothers. The 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





126 


BASKET- MAKERS 




three complete specimens also served as 
paint grinders, for two still have adhering 
to them fine particles of bright red paint, 
and the other bears at one end traces of a 
brilliant yellow pigment. 

GROOVED STONE 

This is a rough lump of soft, gritty sand- 
stone (pi. LXii). On each side of it are 
three deep grooves made by long use, 
probably in sharpening bone implements or 
in working down the shafts of small wooden 
tools. Some of the grooves have smooth, 
round bottoms, as if they had served as 
slots for rubbing strings of beads to uniform 
size. 

HAFTED KNIVES 

Stone implements in their original hafts 
are of particular interest, because the na- 
ture of the hafting usually allows us to 
judge of the service to which the tool was 
put and so helps to throw light on the use 
of the many stone "points," "heads," etc., 
found throughout the country, about the 
purpose of which there exists so much doubt. 




INDIAN NOTES 



STONE OBJECTS 



127 



The first specimen to be 
described (fig. 23) would, 
if discovered without its 
haft, have probably been 
identified as an unfinished 
or rejected spearhead. 
It is a crudely chipped 
blade of coarse flint, 1| 
inches long; at the base 
it measures seven-eighths 
of an inch wide and three- 
sixteenths of an inch 
thick. Whether or not it 
is tanged cannot be as- 
certained, as its attach- 
ment to the short, round, 
wooden haft is entirely 
obscured by a bulky 
lashing, itself hidden by 
a thick coating of pitch. 
The point of the blade is 
blunt and the edges are 
dull and slightly beveled 
from opposite sides. 
This implement was un- 
doubtedly a knife. It 






^^^l 



Fig. 23.— Halted knife. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



128 


BASKET- MAKERS 




was probably designed for coarse work, 
as much better shaped and keener blades 
are to be found in other Basket-maker col- 
lections; it might possibly have been used 
for excavating the bowls of such pipes as 
the ones taken from Cist 27. At all events 
the edge as it is at present could have been 
of little value, and if it had been retained 
in service would doubtless have been sharp- 
ened by rechipping. Successive duUings 
and resharpenings would have cut down its 
length and width, and would ultimately 
have reduced it to the size of the implement 
next to be described. 

This specimen (fig. 24, length 3 inches) 
consists of a short, round, wooden haft to 
which is attached by a heavy seizing a 
stone blade which has been chipped or 
worn down to a mere crescent-shaped stub. 
The edge of the blade is very blunt and 
somewhat pohshed as if by long rubbing; 
it would be of no service as a knife or even 
as a drill. It is very likely that this im- 
plement was originally a knife similar to 
the foregoing one, which, after accidental 




INDIAN NOTES 



o 'T< 

CD O 

o « 
Op. 

CO _>> 

I rS 

a. g- 
< i: 

o 2 

o ^ 

h- p- 
o ^ 

X 

>- 
< 

DC 



STONE OBJECTS 



breakage or many resharpenings, was finally 
used as a scraping or beaming tool. 




129 



Fig. 24.— Blunt hafted implement. 

A knife-handle lacking the blade (fig. 25) 
is described here for comparison with the 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



130 



BASKET- MAKERS 




Fig. 25 



above. Its length is 
3| inches, width 1 
inch. It is cut from 
some tough, close- 
grained wood. The 
slot for the missing 
blade is three-quarters 
of an inch deep, and 
the sides of the haft 
about it are scored to 
provide a firmer grip 
for the lashings that 
held the blade in 
place; a few turns of 
pitch-coated yucca 
string still remain. 
On both sides the 
handle is decorated 
with scratched zigzag 
patterns. The zigzag, 
it may be noted, is a 
favorite Basket-maker 
motive for the orna- 
mentation of all sorts 
of small objects. 



INDIAN NOTES 



STONE OBJECTS 


131 


DART-POINTS 

Only one point was found; it is described 
and illustrated with the other objects of the 
cache in which it occurred (p. 149 and pi. 
Lxvi, e). 

WORKSHOP REFUSE 

The rubbish in Cave du Pont was un- 
usually barren of chips, flakes, and broken 
implements. There were recovered: a sin- 
gle 6-inch bowlder of banded yellow and 
black jasper from which a few flakes had 
been struck; part of a red jasper reject in 
the "turtleback" stage; and fifteen or 
twenty chips of jasper and quartz. A 
few of the latter have blunted edges, show- 
ing that they were used for whittling until 
dufl and then thrown aside. 

FLINT-WORKER'S "PALM" (?) 

This specimen is a piece of dressed hide, 
probably from the neck of a large deer, as 
it is very thick. It has been cut roughly 
to the shape of an isosceles triangle 5 inches 
long by 3| inches across the base. One 
surface is much scarred and worn. These 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





132 


BASKET-MAKERS 




marks, together with the fact that it fits 
nicely in the hand, make it seem probable 
that this tough piece of leather was used as 
a ''palm" to protect the hand of the flint 
worker. 13 

PIPES 

The two pipes found cached together 
in a little pocket by the wall of Cist 27 
are certainly the finest specimens of stone- 
work yet taken from a Basket-maker cave. 
Both were evidently cut from the same 
lump of stone, a hard and very close-grained 
slate, light gray in color, banded with streaks 
of varying shades of purple. These pipes 
obviously formed a pair, for they are closely 
similar in size, shape, and workmanship. 

One of them (fig. 26) is 4f inches long, 
has a diameter at the large or bowl end of 
111 inches, and at the mouth end of 
half an inch. The diameter of the bowl 
itself is lf\ inches; that of the bore at the 
stem, seven thirty-seconds of an inch. The 
size and depth of the bowl could not be as- 
certained by a superficial examination, be- 
cause it is so heavily caked with the crust 




INDIAN NOTES 



PIPES 



133 



of long-continued smoking that only a very 
small orifice remains (fig. 27). The X-ray 
photograph, however (pi. Lxni), enables 




Fig. 26.— Pipe of banded slate. 

one to make out very clearly the original 

contour of both bowl and bore. It will be 

seen that the bowl proper 

occupies about half the 

length of the pipe. It 

has a shallow, flaring 

orifice, and an almost 

cylindrical lower part 

which tapers gradually 

from three-quarters of 

an inch in diameter at 

the beginning of the flare to five-eighths of 

an inch at the place where the narrower 

smoke-passage commences. The latter is 




Fig. 27. — End view of 
fig. 26. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



134 



B A S K E T - M A K E R S 



also gradually tapered until near the 
mouth-end it has a width of one-quarter of 
an inch. From the fact that the taper is 




Fig. 28.— Pipe of banded slate. 

all from the bowl-end, it is obvious that 
the finishing of the bore must have been 
done entirely from that 
direction; it is probable, 
indeed, that the whole 
drilling was carried out 
from the bowl-end. 
Both bowl-end and 
mouth-end (in the latter 
there is no trace of a 
detachable stem) are 
ground off flat, and the sides have an even 
and very regular, slightly convex curve. 




Fig. 29.— End view of 
fig. 28. 



INDIAN NOTES 



PIPES 


135 


The surface is perfectly smooth, but is not 
polished. 

The second pipe (fig. 28) is 4| inches long, 
has a diameter at the large end of 2j^ 
inches, and at the mouth end of five-eighths 
of an inch. The diameter of the bowl is 
1| inches; that of the bore at the stem 
seven-sixteenths of an inch. This pipe 
had split lengthwise in two while still in 
use, and was evidently mended and con- 
tinued in service, for a broad shallow groove 
has been roughly scored into the surface 
around the middle to hold a ligature which 
has now rotted away. As the "cake" 
has disappeared, the bore of the pipe can 
be investigated; it is trumpet-shaped (see 
diagrammatic drawing, fig. 30), and the 
flaring part at the large end has deep 
scratches running obliquely toward the 
orifice as if that part had been worked to 
its present form by whittling with a stone 
knife (fig. 29). The lower bore running 
from the flaring bowl nearly to the stem, 
bears the typical concentric circular stria- 
tions of a drilling tool (these appear deep 
down in the bowl in fig. 29) . It is probable 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





136 



B A S K E T - ^I A K E R S 



that a large hole was first drilled into the 
bowl-end as far as a (fig. 30); from that 
point the work was continued with a some- 
what smaller drill so that a slight offset 
or shoulder is left at a (purposely exagger- 
ated a little in the drawing). At b drilling 
from the large end was discontinued, and a 
hole to complete the passage was bored in 



■ ^i^j-f 




Fig. 30. 



-Section of pipe to show successive drillings of 
the bore. 



from the smaller end; this hole is not quite 
in line with the first one. Lastly, the flar- 
ing part of the bowl was produced by 
scraping and whittling. In the drawing 
there is shown at c a coating of a reddish 
gummy substance, quite different in appear- 
ance from the "cake" in the other pipe. 
This reduces the size of the bore to about 
one-eighth of an inch; whether it is a cement 



INDIAN NOTES 



DECORATED STONE 



137 



which once held a stem of wood or of 
bird-bone, or whether it merely served to 
constrict the rather large aperture, is 
conjectural. 

DECORATED STONE 

On one of the typical small Basket-maker 
mealing stones, or manos, there is painted 
the crude face shown 
in fig 31. The stone 
itself is 4 1 inches long, 
but has lost a small 
portion of one end; it 
has been used since the 
break occurred, as that 
surface is somewhat 
worn. The lines of the 
decoration look at first 

sight as if they had f^^. 3 1. -Decorated stone. 

been penciled with a 
bit of charcoal, but examination under a 
lens shows that the pigment was brushed 
on in liquid form and has settled into the 
minute interstices of the stone in a way that 
charcoal never does. The delineation of 




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138 


BASKET- MAKERS 




the face is unlike anything yet recorded 
in Basket-maker pictography. 

PAINTS 

There were found several specimens of 
yellow and red ochres of varying degrees 
of brightness, and a few of pure white 
gypsum; these were evidently used as 
paints. The materials had been ground to 
powder, mixed with water, and then molded 
in the hands into cakes of various sizes and 
shapes, oval, cylindrical, or round. One 
lot of yellow paint in small lumps, aggre- 
gating about one pound in weight, appears 
to have been mixed with some gummy 
substance for a "binder." 

PSEUDO-POTTERY 

It is probable that the fragmentary little 
specimens about to be described repre- 
sent early attempts of the Basket-makers 
at the manufacture of pottery. The ob- 
jects are parts of three vessels roughly 
molded of red clay and showing distinctly 
the finger-marks of their makers. That 




INDIAN NOTES 



PSEUDO-POTTERY 



139 



none of them were fired is proved by the 
fact that small bits of their substance, crum- 
bled and moistened, can readily be kneaded 
back into a plastic condition. The clay 





Fig. 32.— Fragment 
of unfired clay vessel. 



Fig. 33.— Fragment of unfired 
clay vessel. 



is a light brick-red color; it shows no trace 
of intentionally added tempering material, 
but contains a few tiny water-worn pebbles. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



140 


B A S K E T - M A K E R S 




The first specimen (fig. 32) is part of a 
small conical vessel. Although the actual 
base is missing, there is little doubt that 
it was of tapering form, and that the piece 
was about 5 inches high and 3 inches wide 
at the mouth. The rim is rounded and, 
b>^ the standards of later Southwestern 
pottery, very heavy; toward the base the 
ware is not less than three-quarters of an 
inch in thickness. The surface, both within 
and without, is uneven and was obviously 
modeled with the fingers. 

The second fragment (fig. 33) is from a 
closely similar, though probably not the 
same, vessel. On one broken edge are the 
sides of two holes which pierce the wall of 
the pot 2 inches below the rim; they are 
one eighth of an inch in diameter, and appear 
to have been made by pushing a small 
round stick through the clay while it was 
still moist. 

Lastly there are four sherds which fit 
together to make about one quarter of a 
bowl nearly 7 inches in diameter (fig. 34). 
As the base is lacking, it is hard to approxi- 
mate the depth, but it was probably in the 




INDIAN NOTES 



PSEUDO-POTTERY 



141 



neighborhood of 4 inches. The rim is 
rounded and slightly wavy, and the walls 
are lightly finger-marked. The most inter- 
esting feature of this bowl is the crude 
attempt at the decoration of its inner sur- 
face. There is a roughly-drawn, horizon- 




FiG. 34. — Fragment of unfired clay vessel. 

tal zigzag in black paint set three-quarters 
of an inch below the rim, and another near 
the bottom. Two scalloped incised lines 
run downward from the rim, and there are 
also lines of shallow punctate marks as 
shown in the drawing. 

The above specimens, which being un- 
fired are not really pottery, naturally bring 
up the question of the presence or absence 



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142 


BASKET- MAKERS 




of true fired pottery in the Basket-maker 
culture. The only such pieces that have 
ever been attributed to the Basket-makers 
are some vessels in a collection from Grand 
Gulch procured by McLoyd and Graham 
and sold by them to the Hyde Exploring 
Expedition. In McLoyd and Graham's 
catalogue it was stated: "The third kind of 
pottery is very valuable, less than fifty pieces 

having been found up to date It 

is a very crude unglazed ware, some of the 
bowls showing the imprint of the baskets, 
in which they were formed-''^" These 
pieces are now in the Museum of the Ameri- 
can Indian, Heye Foundation, where we 
have had an opportunity to examine them. 
They are a peculiar heavy, slate-gray 
ware, with well-smoothed but rather un- 
even surfaces; in form they are unlike any 
other Southwestern pottery with which we 
are familiar; they are small, bowl-like, 
dipper-like, and crucible-like vessels, the 
latter provided with lugs and spouts. Sev- 
eral of them are crudely decorated with 
broad lines and large dots of dull-red paint. 
While it is not feasible to describe this 




INDIAN NOTES 



PSEUDO-POTTERY 


143 


pottery adequately in the present publica- 
tion, we may say that to anyone who has 
worked much with Southwestern ceramics 
it is quite distinctive, and once seen could 
be identified at a glance, even in small 
sherds. We do not beheve it to be of 
Basket-maker origin, because no similar 
ware was ever discovered by the Wetherill 
brothers in the large number of Basket- 
maker caves dug by them, nor have we 
ever found any of it in our own explorations 
in northeastern Arizona and southeastern 
Utah. On the other hand, it is certainly 
not characteristic of any known later phase 
of Southwestern culture. There is, then, 
no well-authenticated instance of true 
fired pottery of Basket-maker origin, and it 
seems hardly possible that if these people 
had possessed pottery some vessel would 
not have turned up in the many graves 
well-stocked with offerings that have been 
found by the Wetherills and ourselves, or 
some fragment among the quantities of 
rubbish so carefully gone through in Cave 
du Pont. This gives the little unfired 
specimens found by Mr. Nusbaum a partic- 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





144 


BASKET- MAKERS 




ular interest, for, as was said above, they 
may represent the very first attempts of 
the Basket-makers at the manufacture of 
pottery. 

SNARES 
BIRD SNARES 

With the bunched bones of Burial E 
(pi. xxxn) there was found a large double 
bundle. This proved to be made up of 
two packages, one containing 120, the 
other 17, slim, straight, squawbush twigs 
averaging 25 inches in length and three- 
sixteenths of an inch in diameter at their 
larger ends. The majority of them are 
peeled; the ends show clean breaks, but no 
pointing or other finish. At from 15 to 17 
inches from the larger end (or 8 to 10 
inches from the tip) each twig has a tight 
wrapping of twisted fiber under which is a 
short end of fine, human-hair string. These 
strings are all broken off short; the longest 
piece that remains measures only 3 inches. 

The identification as bird snares rests on 
a large bunch of similar twigs from Grand 
Gulch, now in the American Museum of 




INDIAN NOTES 



SNARES 


145 


Natural History (H-13834); the latter 
specimens have the same ligatures and the 
same human-hair strings which, however, 
are unbroken, are 4 to 5 inches long, and 
terminate in small free-running slip-nooses. 
The strings are so fine that they could 
hardly have held anything stronger than 
a small bird. How these little devices 
were set up and how sprung is problematical. 

NET-SNARE 

When found this specimen appeared to 
be merely a small stick loosely wrapped with 
cordage, but on opening it out and unwind- 
ing the strings, it proved to be a very clev- 
erly made and efficient snare for the cap- 
ture of rabbits, birds, or other small game. 
The device consists of a loop of heavy fiber- 
string which, laid in a circle, encloses a 
space about 3 feet 6 inches in diameter; 
this space is filled by a net of finer string 
(see pi. Lxrv, the net is there only partly 
spread). The heavy looped cord is strung 
along the marginal meshes of the filling net; 
its two ends pass through a 2j inch wooden 
ring, which is tied to the net at the throat 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





146 



BASKET- MAKERS 



of the loop, and finally are fastened to a 
short, sharp-pointed stake. 

The snare was obviously used as follows: 
The pin was driven solidly into the ground 
and the net spread to its full extent, across 
a runway, over a hole, or in some other 
likely situation (fig. 35, a); when the animal 




FtG. 35. — Probable use of net-snare. 

or bird encountered the light meshes it 
would attempt to push through them, would 
become entangled, and its struggles would 
cause the net to gather and run up on the 
edge cord and pucker about the victim. 
As the net pursed, the little ring attached 
to it would be pulled up along the edge cord 
and effectually close the mouth of the 



INDIAN NOTES 




X. 



^-N 



■■^<J 






DC a 
< c 



\ 



/ 



b 



BASKET-MAKER CAVE 




RE-USED UMBILICAL-PAD COVER AND PART OF CONTENTS 
(Length, of d, 7^ in.) 



MEDICINE OUTFIT 


147 


bag into which the quarry had run itself 
(fig. 35, b). 

This snare is beautifully made and is 
still strong and serviceable. The edge- 
cord is a hard, three-strand Apocynum 
string about five thirty-seconds of an inch 
in diameter. The net is of much finer 
two-strand string, a little more than one- 
sixteenth of an inch in diameter; the meshes, 
though not exactly true to gage, averages 
3 inches. The puckering-ring is„a hoop 
made by tying together with sinew the 
two ends of a small peeled twig; this same 
binding holds under it the end of mesh-cord 
which attaches the hoop to the net. The 
anchor-peg is 7f inches long. 

"MEDICINE OUTFIT" 

The container of this interesting little 
collection of oddments is an old umbilical- 
pad cover made of a very soft, woolly pelt, 
probably dog-skin (pi. Lxv, d). It was 
originally carefully sewed up with all but a 
short section of the seam turned in; on 
removal from the umbilical pad it was torn 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





148 


BASKET-MAKERS 


• 


open without unsewing the seam. In it 
were placed : a deerskin thong (pi. lxv, c) ; a 
pair of small skin containers (pi. lxv, 
a, b); and a little bag of dressed hide (pi. 
Lxvi, a). The thong is 16 inches long by 
one quarter of an inch wide; its edges show 
the straight, clean cuts of a very sharp 
knife, presumably a keen-edged spall of 
flint. The small containers are irregularly 
shaped pieces of deerskin with the hair on, 
puckered up into little bags; one is tied 
with a bit of dressed deerskin, the other 
with a wisp of fine string; both are empty, 
but stains on the inside of one of them show 
that it had formerly held red paint. 

The bag of dressed deerskin (pi. lxvi, a) 
is 7 inches deep and about 2^ inches wide 
at the bottom. It is made of two pieces: 
a round one for the base; and a long one 
rolled into a cylinder, sewed to the base 
and up the side to within 3 inches of the 
top, thus leaving a roomy aperture. The 
seams are turned in and the thread is a 
fine Apocynum string. The mouth was 
tied up by many turns of a narrow, soft 
deerskin thong 20 1 inches long, one end of 




INDIAN NOTES 



BASKET MAKER CAVE 




MEDICINE POUCH" AND CONTENTS 

(Length of a, 7 in.) 



MEDICINE OUTFIT 



149 



which is knotted and rove through a hole 
in the neck of the bag. Within were the 
following objects: 

(1) A bobbin-shaped object (pi. Lxvi,d; 
and fig. 36) not quite If inches long, cut 
from the shaft of some heavy bone; the 
ends bear traces of the facets 
produced in grinding it to 
shape, the other surfaces are 
carefully smoothed. It is very 
much like some of the 
''weights" or "charms" which 
are found attached to the shafts 
of spear- throwers. 

(2) Two minute flakes of 
quartz (pi. Lxvi, b, c). 

(3) A small ball of resi- 
nous, gummy substance . Fig. 36.- 

' *= -' ject from 

(pi. LXVI, g). pouch." 

(4) A tanged point of red jasper, well- 
chipped, 1| inches long (pi. lxvi, e). This 
is surely a head for a dart foreshaft. 

(5) A shriveled bit of organic tissue 
(pi. Lxvi, /) which appears to have been 
tubular and looks very much like a dried 
umbilical cord; it is wrapped in a piece of 



-Bone ob- 
"medicine 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



150 


BASKET- MAKERS 




soft fur and overwrapped with shredded 
fiber and string. 

The term "medicine outfit," which we 
have applied to this queerly assorted col- 
lection of little objects, is of course guess- 
work, but we can think of no practical end 
which could have been served by it. 


• 


INDIAN NOTES 





151 


NOTES 

1. Practically all the published information in 

regard to the Basket-makers is to be 
found in the following articles: 

Prudden, T. Mitchell. An Elder 
Brother to the Cliff-dweller, Har- 
pers Monthly Magazine for June, 
1897, pp. 56-63, New York, 1897. 

Pepper, George H. The Ancient 
Basket Makers of Southeastern 
Utah, American Museum Journal^ 
vol. II, no. 4, suppL, New York, 1902. 
Also, The Throwing-stick of a Pre- 
historic People of the Southwest, 
International Congress of Ameri- 
canists, 13th Session, Neiv York, 
1902, pp. 107-130, Easton, Pa., 1905. 

Kidder, A. V., and Guernsey, S. J. 
Archeological explorations in North- 
eastern Arizona, Bulletin 65, Bureau 
of American Ethnology, Washing- 
ton, 1919. 

Guernsey, S. J., and Kidder, A. V. 
Basket-maker Caves of Northeastern 
Arizona, Papers of the Peahody 
Museum of American Archaeology 
and Ethnology, vol. viii, no. 2, Cam- 
bridge, 1921. 

2. See Judd, N. M., in American Anthropolo- 

gist, N. s., vol. 19, 1917, p. 38. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





152 



BASKET- MAKERS 



3. See Fewkes, J. W., Ventilators in Cere- 

monial Rooms of Prehistoric Cliff-dwell- 
ings. American Anthropologist, N. s., 
vol. 10, 1Q08, p. 387. 

4. For notes by Dr. Collins on other specimens 

of Basket-maker corn, see Guernsey and 
Kidder, op. cit., pp. 41-42. 

5. Kidder and Guernsey, op. cit., pi. 41, a. 

6. Cf. idem, pi. 69. 

7. Idem, pi. 68, c. 

8. Guernsey and Kidder, op. cit., pi. 40, e. 

9. Kidder and Guernsey, op. cit., pi. 72. 

10. Guernsey and Kidder, op. cit., pi. 20, a; and 

p. 56. 

11. Idem, pi. 4, ,?, i; pi. 21, c; and p. 54. 

12. Kidder and Guernsey, op. cit., pi. 78. 

13. See Guernsey and Kidder, op. cit., p. 65, 

for details of the weave and decoration 
of these bags; the extra warps in the 
present specimen are introduced by the 
"second" method (op. cit,, p. 68, and pi. 
27, a). 

14. Pepper, The Thro^^ing Stick, pi. iii. 

15. The marks of such tools are often seen on 

the sides of cists in hardpan. See Kidder 
and Guernsey, op. cit., pi. 8, b, left-hand 
cist. 

16. Compare Guernsey and Kidder, op. cit., 

pi. 37, a, c; the present plate (lviii) is 
arranged to bring out the great similarity 
between the Cave du Pont digging-sticks 
and those from Marsh Pass, i\rizona; 
compare & of pi. 37, Guernsey and Kidder, 
mth c and d, of pi. l\T[II, d with e, and g 
with/. 



INDIAN NOTES 



NOTES 


153 


17. See Kidder and Guernsey, op. cit., pi. 47, 

i, e. The specimens figured at b and c 
came from a disturbed grave which we 
have since identified as Basket-maker; 
they should be compared with pi. lvtii, 
a, /, of this report. 

18. See Guernsey and Kidder, op. cit., p. 90, 

and pi. 38, g, //, i. 

19. See W. H. Holmes, Handbook of Aboriginal 

American Antiquities, Part 1, Bull. 60, 
Btireau of American Ethnology, pp. 310, 
314, and fig. 179. 

20. Catalogue and Description of a very large 

Collection of Prehistoric Relics, Obtained 
in the Cliff Houses and Caves of South- 
eastern Utah, 1894, pp. [10-11]. A vessel 
from Sunflower cave, Marsh Pass, Arizona, 
described by us as being possibly of Basket- 
maker origin (Kidder and Guernsey, op. 
cit., pp. 96, 208, and pi. 59, a), has since 
been surely identified as a later product. 
The two crude and badly fired clay pipes 
found by us at Marsh Pass and Sayod- 
neechee, Arizona (op. cit., p. 188, fig. 
94, d), can hardly be classed as pottery, 
for the semi-firing observed in them might 
well be due to the heat engendered in 
smoking. 




AND MONOGRAPHS 





m -0 ^''' 



^'^ 



I'm 



